Shell in China

We are in week four of our eighteen week term and things are going great! I have been super busy teaching classes, holding office hours, running a book club, trying to get a reading room up and running, oh, and studying a bit of Chinese in my spare time! It is good to be busy though. When the students were all gone this winter, time stood still. Thad and I are happy to have our days filled again.

This week, the lesson in our textbook, Challenge to Speak, (the Peace Corps Volunteers in China have lovingly renamed it Challenge to Teach) is “Giving Instructions and Directions.” I thought this was a great lesson to get the students outside in the beautiful spring weather, so I devised a student-led direction-giving activity for them.

I put the students into groups of three. One student was the direction-giver, one the direction-follower and one was the English policeman. (The English policeman makes sure only English is spoken. They love this job!!) I then gave them a paper that has different destinations on campus that they have to get to by giving directions. At each destination, they changed roles, so someone new wore the blindfold, someone new was the English policeman and someone new had to practice their English directions. They were all excited, thinking that this is easy and they are just going to go mess around outside for awhile, until I dropped the other shoe. I pulled out my proverbial hat of tricks, which is really a bag of blindfolds! Haha! I told them that the direction-follower had to wear the blindfold. They freaked out a bit about this, but once they got down to business they did a really good job practicing their directions.

The other fun thing that came out of this lesson (other than watching them stumble around campus as they practiced English) was teaching them that when you hold up your left hand it makes an “L” and that is an easy way to remember left and right. They had never heard of that little trick before and it went over quite well. My students know left and right, but they are going to be middle school English teachers, so I try to give them small hints that will help them when they are the ones teaching!

Chinese classrooms tend to be very traditional. The teacher stands at the front of the room, on a small stage, behind a podium, and delivers a lecture. The students listen, stand to ask a question and there isn’t a whole lot of discussion that takes place. With this background, I think our students are always amazed when Thad and I have them playing with puppets (that was Thad’s lesson this week), walking around the classroom, and acting out words. In the beginning, our students were not sure what to make of us, but I think now they just go with the flow. Foreign teachers do things differently!!

Book Nook Update:
We are still working on securing a room from the college. Rachel and I spent Monday afternoon peering in the windows and doors of all the rooms on campus, trying to see what we might be able to commandeer. We found a couple of possibilities and are waiting for a response about them.

We, of course, are still looking for funding and donations, so if you would like to help, please contact me at shellinchina@yahoo.com

I enjoyed the pictures of your students engaged in a project they found fun! they look like they are having fun; as usual you came up with a strategy to get the students involved involuntarily and then they become voluntarily engaged!! And learning the whole time! What a novel concept! Good teachers think outside the box! You are not just a good teacher, but an exceptional one!I am proud of you. (Thad too!)