China blog 4

Teaching! It has finally begun, and oh what fun it is. I am really happy with the age group I have. Not only are they painfully adorable, but they are at the age where learning is exciting to them. Every single one of our students is eager to show us they can do something right, and they are all very capable of doing so. The only behavior problems we have are usually from over-excitement. Sometimes they may be talking out of turn (okay, lots of the time) or lose focus, but it is never because they refuse to do the work. They will always obey you when you ask them directly to do something, it is just sometimes difficult to keep the entire group on task at the same time. But overall they are very good. One of the most common ways they misbehave is merely by shouting an answer out rather than raising their hand, which I think is the best type of bad behavior. At least they are eager to learn and show us what they know.
Coming into the first day, I was a little nervous because I did not feel very prepared for the lesson plan. However, it seems that I do not really have to be very prepared, as Miss Neely is well versed in teaching and has plenty of ideas already thought up for the class. I merely have to help her and have a good time working with the kids. She is in fact quite the disciplinarian, which actually makes things even easier for me as I become the good guy by default. The kids are all really sweet and seem very excited just to have a big person to talk and work with them. This job has made me understand already how much I really do love being around children. Although both days required a lot out of us, I actually felt full of energy by the end of the day. My body was tired, but my spirit was pumped. I look forward to each day.
So yes, I am writing this after the second day of teaching. Both days have been pretty similar, with lots of light lessons interspersed with mostly organized play time. It makes me remember how fun school was at the beginning.
I am surprised at how well behaved the children are. Of course, they are young and wild and energetic, but that is to be expected. Like I said, they all do what they are told immediately when you ask them, so long as they receive the message you are giving. The “trouble child” that I was warned about, Yahya, doesn’t seem to be any different from the other kids, really. He has a bit of a snatching problem when playing with the other children, but other than that he is not nearly as bad as I was expecting. He does things that you ask him to do and is eager to help. He really wants to do the right thing, and I think proper communication and patience with him is all he needs. He is also incredibly bright and seems to know the answers to almost all the questions we ask of him.
One child that has seemed to have the hardest time adjusting is a boy named Alex who is new to the school. He comes from a very unique situation, as he is from Denmark and looks completely European to me, yet his first language is Chinese. His mother is from China and his father must speak the language fluently, since from what I hear that seems to be the only language they speak around him. At first I really suspected he may have some special needs issues, as he was extremely shy and spent most of the first day completely off on his own. During P.E., he refused to join the circle or do any of the activities the other kids were doing entirely. We weren’t sure if he was really receiving the information we were trying to communicate to him. Yet, it turned out he is just really, really, really shy. He apparently had a hard time at his last school, a Chinese kindergarten, and has some separation issues with his parents. But I have already been pleased to see him warm up a bit. By the end of the first day, he was obeying directions and seemed to be much better settled. Then, he gave me a smile the next morning as he arrived. It was the first one I had seen him give! It quickly became apparent that he did not have any special needs and was in fact very bright. Near the end of lunch he did crawl back into his shell a good bit during an activity where we were trying to gauge everyone’s writing ability. The assignment was very difficult, and he seemed to be discouraged by the fact that he didn’t think he could do it. Almost immediately I saw him erasing on his paper, and it turned out that he had written his name very well but erased it. Then, he refused to write anymore and went away from the children on his own. Eventually, he actually went out into the hallway, squatted down and cried. When I told Miss Neely about it, she told me to go bring him into the room, but he absolutely was not willing to do so. So instead I sat with him and comforted him a bit, talking to him about being a new kid and how things will be okay. I stayed with him and began to talk about other things, like a bug that crawled across the floor and a poster on the wall, and he seemed to warm up a bit. Then, lunchtime arrived and he was willing to go into the bathroom to wash his hands before walking down with the class to the cafeteria. He seemed much better by that point. I began to realize what was needed with children this age. Sometimes you are not going to be able to get them to do what you have planned for whatever reason. The best way to deal with a student like this who is shy is not to force him into anything, but to be patient and build a good relationship with him. Hopefully he can learn to trust me and will be more willing to join in on activities. At the end of lunch I sat down next to him and talked to him for a bit as he finished his lunch. All of the other students from our class had already finished, so he was sitting next to only people from other classes. I was able to get him to respond at least with nodding and shaking his head by asking him which foods he liked. I think I made some big headway when I asked him in Chinese, “Are you full?” which led him to smile widely and nod his head. We are supposed to speak English to all the children to encourage them to do so, but in his situation I felt it was something that would help make him feel more comfortable. I had only an hour or so earlier first learned that Chinese was the language he spoke, and I was glad I decided to do that. It seemed to have a good effect on him. After that I helped him clear his tray and asked him whether he wanted to go play outside or in the library. He nodded at library, and so we went there, where I let him choose a few dinosaur and animal books for us to look at together. He seemed much more excitable, and said things like “Look at that!” to get my attention while pointing at pictures. Some of the other students were in the library too and came over with books for me to read to them. I read some of a book while still looking at the animal book with Alex, and it seemed to help him get gradually more comfortable with the other classmates. When we returned to the classroom I drew a dinosaur on the Smartboard while we waited for our first activity, and he excitedly shouted out “Dinosaur!” with a big smile. I was very happy to see him opening up more. He seemed to be making progress making friends with the other students as well. I noticed some of the Chinese speaking students speaking with him, and he responded well to that. I think it is only a matter of time. As he left I was able to meet his mother, who was very nice. She said he had told her about “Mr. William” the day before but couldn’t remember the head teacher’s name. It was nice to see him appear happy as he left.
One last thing that I find remarkable is the amount of Chinese the students know. On the first day I saw two students, one American and the other Pakistani, speaking to each other in Chinese as they played. In fact, that is the language those two prefer to use while playing. The same is true for two other students, one of whom is Chinese but the other of whom I do not think is. Several other students are amazingly competent in the language as well. I am extremely impressed, and I think these children are growing up in a great situation.