Why I’m Failing At Participative Rule Setting
Yesterday I tried to have a participative rule setting session with my students. Since I’m obviously not a big fan of imposing rules on children or using a system of rewards and punishments I wanted to attempt a group discussion on what classroom rules we should have. Here’s the basic idea behind participative rule setting:
This process can be initiated by teachers at the beginning of the term to establish rules that the whole classroom finds fair and are willing to follow. Students are more likely to keep to their end of the bargain when using No-Lose Conflict Resolution and participative rule setting because of a simple bit of common sense called The Principle of Participation.
Simply stated, the principle holds that people who are invited to participate in making decisions or setting up rules that affect them somehow are more willing to abide by them or keep to their part of an agreement. We all like feeling that our views are being represented.
Sounds great. But it isn’t easy to do. Yesterday’s class didn’t go well. I’ll explain some of the reasons I think I failed.
I Don’t Speak Chinese
This is a pretty obvious one but I think it’s important to understand how hard it is to communicate with children that don’t speak the same language.
There are some native English speakers and a few kids who are semi-fluent. But for most our interactions involve very basic, merely functional English communication. It is simple stuff like hello, how are you, go outside, go to the bathroom, who wants to play and whatever phrases we’re learning that day.
Oh yeah, there is also upside down. (This is a frequent request from the girls who want me to pick them up and carry them around upside down. It’s like some kind of drug; they get high on having blood rush to their brain. Anyway, I love the game too so I’m not complaining.)
The rest of the communication is nonverbal. This shouldn’t be underestimated. I know 100% that the kids can tell from my body language, the way I smile or laugh, how I pick them up, and everything else that I’m different from the Chinese assistants.
But when it comes to communicating an idea it gets much harder. I said to the whole class “I know this classroom has a lot of rules and I know that you guys don’t like some of them. I was hoping that we could spend ten or fifteen minutes and talk about the rules and see if we can come up with some that everybody agrees on.” The English speaking kids understood this sentence (partially at least, more on that later) but the Chinese kids had no clue. And how could they? I tried to simplify what I wanted but it isn’t easy to do. And it just confused them more. This led to the second problem.
The Chinese Translators
In my classroom there are a couple Chinese teachers who are there to help. One of them is my assistant and part of her job is to translate for me.
Usually, this isn’t a problem. She’s the nicest of the Chinese assistants and treats the kids very well. Unfortunately, this whole Principle of Participation thing wasn’t something she was even remotely familiar with. So when I said “I know you guys hate the no-talking-during-lunch rule” she translated it to “no talking during lunch.”
She wasn’t doing it maliciously or anything. When I told her I wanted to talk about the rules, she probably just assumed that it meant we were going to recite the rules. What else could it mean?
Either way, her translations essentially came out the exact opposite of what I wanted. She turned it from a participative rule setting session into a reminder about all the rules currently imposed. Fail.
This Idea Is More Foreign Than A Second Language
This is the issue that even had the English speakers confused.
Children in schools are not used to getting a say in the rules. Even if they have great parents that practice these techniques (and there is probably a 1-in-2-billion chance of that being the case) there are even fewer schools that do. Kids are used to being ordered, prodded, pushed, commanded, controlled, subjected, restrained, adjusted, confined, directed, punished, silenced, and finally questioned. They’re like terror suspects minus the water-boarding (or not).
I’m some foreigner, that they’ve only known for a week, sitting them down and essentially saying “we’re going to do things the exact opposite of every thing you’ve previously experienced.” They had no idea what I was getting at. It was kind of like when I first told them we weren’t going to do rewards and punishments back on day one and they all just looked at me like confused puppies. Only then it was cute and funny. This time it was sad.
So What Do I Do?
I think I’ve laid out the biggest three issues. I can’t speak Chinese, my translators don’t know what the fuck is going on, and my kids aren’t used to this sort of thing at all.
So how can I make this work? I don’t know actually. I’m going to keep trying. But short of learning Chinese myself or hiring my own excellent translator I’m not sure what to do. I can’t go back in time and make their parents start them on this system. And I can’t change the way the entire school works.
This is why I’m writing this post. I want your ideas. I know there are some extremely intelligent people who visit this blog and I’m sure you are one of them. Help me.
Leave a comment or email me. Or, if you have no ideas, maybe you could pass this post on to a friend. Thank you!
Chinese Furniture Market
Today me and two friends went shopping at a Chinese furniture market. A “market” is a huge building with all kinds of different vendors. It’s kind of like an indoor flea market.
If you want to know why there is a plane parked in the front of the market, I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that. Like most things in China, the why seems more or less irrelevant. There’s a plane in front of the furniture market. Period. You don’t need a back-story.
Inside the furniture market looks like this:
Room after room just packed to the walls with whatever you might need. They even have the kitchen sink (har har okay I’ll stop).
If you’re interested in a shower that can also travel through time, you’ve come to the right place.
If you’re not so into the luxury of using space technology to shower, don’t worry, they have alternatives.
Who is using these things? My theory is that someone used the time travel shower to bring these things back from around 400 A.D. But what do I know? I’m just a guy who takes pictures of bathtubs.
This isn’t really related to furniture but one of the vendors had it on her desk for good luck. It’s pretty ridiculous.
It’s a golden frog surrounded by a bunch of coins. I’m assuming all of this nonsense is used to increase luck. With a high enough luck rating the vendor will receive +3 to their Ripping Off Foreigners skill.
Check Out My Sweet Ride
I’m going to call it Hot Rod. I picked it up for 300 kuai which is only about 44 US dollars. There were even cheaper ones, around 150 kuai, but I figured those would be the most likely to fall apart in the middle of the ridiculous Chinese traffic.
Anyway, after having them tighten up all the bolts, I rode it right out of the store and back home. By the way, the store I bought it from is called Carrefour (spelling?). I don’t know if they are in other countries or not. I would describe it as a store trying to be the way the Chinese imagine an American supermarket.
It’s laid out like a western store, so it seems very familiar. The biggest difference is that it’s like a combination of every store ever. The top floor is massive grocery store with tons of fresh fruit and vegetables and all kinds of weirdo meat. It also has all of the standard food like cereal and soda and cookies and snacks. But then you take the escalator downstairs and thats where you can find pretty much everything in the world. It has furniture, bedding, toiletries, motorized scooters, bikes, electronics, clothing, jewelry, school supplies, like really, everything. I could keep listing forever.
Maybe I’ll go back and take some pictures. I also need to take some pictures of the traffic that I’ll be riding in. Until then just trust me that Chinese traffic is such a retarded clusterfuck it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. There’s 13 million people living in this city and none of them can walk, ride, or drive without getting in each other’s way.
I have a friend who would love it though because he could ride over pedestrians on his bike and nobody would give a shit. Pedestrians have 0% right of way. Buses and cars are king. Bikers are like wiley jesters switching from highway to sidewalk swerving in and out of cars and running down pedestrians. And that’s what I’ll be now.
Update: Apparently Carrefour is a pretty huge and well-known hypermarket chain run by the French. I probably should have just Googled it. But anyway, it’s still an amazing store.
Caption Contest: Ass Hair Salon
I found this little gem walking home from work today. Welcome to China everybody! What the fuck are they cutting at this place? Ass hair or the hair of people who are asses?
Anyway, I figure this is as good a piece of Engrish as any to use for a caption contest.
Submit your captions for the above photo in the comments. McCoy and I will select our favorite and we’ll find some Chinese knickknack to give you as a prize.
Here are some good terrible examples to get your started:
- “Ass Hair Salon: The closest shave from top to bottom.”
- “Finally you can show them your best side.”
- “Proper grooming is important for any lady.”
Okay, okay. You can all stop groaning now and come up with some funny ones.
No purchase necessary to win. Multiple entries permitted. Contest eligibility may vary. Prizes subject to nonexistence.
Hot Water, Still No Internet
We’ve been living in our apartment since Saturday night. We moved in all of a sudden and the landlord wasn’t really prepared, so we understood that some stuff wasn’t working. It was just nice to have a place.
Monday was supposed to be the day we got everything set up and that pretty much happened except for the internet. Hopefully tonight we will finally get it working and McCoy and I can start pumping out some new posts.
Just as a side note, we went from Friday night to Monday night without a real shower. It was torture to try to take cold showers. The water was like freezing sheets of ice rain. And what made it even worse was that we had a perfectly working water cooler that could give us boiling hot water for tea and coffee. It just taunted us.
I actually tried filling up a Nalgene bottle with the near-boiling water and taking it into the shower. So I was in there like jumping under the ice water and then jumping back and splashing myself with scalding water. I also tried mixing them in little glass drinking cups and lining them up on my shower shelves and pouring them over my head one at a time.
Anyway, this is what becomes of you when you lose some basic amenities. Just so you know…
