Recently my school has bought many books that I can use in class, including Dr. Seuss books, which I have found to be a great tool for teaching the kids concepts as well as new words. What I’ve been doing in order to give the kids at least some choice is have my students vote on which book they want. For obvious reasons this plan has completely backfired. What ends up happening usually is that about 60 to 70% (and sometimes more but not usually) of the kids will want one of the books. This is great, but of course the other 30 to 40% of the kids are upset about this. I do try to compromise with them and offer to read the other book the next day. For the rest of the time though the kids whose book I am not reading are usually upset.

I think that my students show the inherent problem with democracy and that is that 51% are capable of deciding for the other 49% of people want to do. Oh thank you democracy, 51% of people have voted to kill the other 49%, well it was democratic so it’s fair, right? Anyway, I really don’t know what to do because I want to offer the kids choice but I don’t want to upset 30 or 40% of them in the process. Compromise helps, but especially with the inability to really communicate with my students (they don’t really speak much English) it is much more difficult than if I were able to tell them what the compromise is. Any ideas or help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

I also want to let you all know that I am going to start a new series on forward thinking. In it I will address the problems that our placement company, Anderson’s school, and people in general have. I think that it will be around 3 or 4 posts so look for that to come. So, look for those posts, coming soon and once again thank you all for the support.

Related posts:

1. Quick Update
2. Quick Update
3. My Day

Basketball has become a topic great interest to the Chinese though. Whether it is the Chinese Olympic basketball team from the 2008 summer games, the CBA or the much more popular NBA, the Chinese are obsessed with basketball. Not only do they watch it, but they also play it. During my lunch break at my kindergarten I will wander around and hear basketballs bouncing all over the area that I work.

I have also had the males from our recruiting company ask me about basketball in America, and who I like. They are even more well versed in the NBA than I am though, talking about the games from the past days, or who is going to win the title.

As far as I can tell though they still seem obsessed with Michael Jordan, and are now becoming obsessed with Kobe Bryant, which shows that no matter how big of a dick you are, you can still be worshiped as a hero (cough Mao, cough Mao Zedong).

China really has embraced the game of basketball and of course have (like any good government) turned it into a source of ground worship. By producing two players who have made it into the NBA they have turned the once prominent American worship into Chinese pride. Yao Ming is all over ads on television and subway billboards (posing for everything from Oreos to computers and cell phones).

It really is amazing how the government can take something as mundane as basketball and get the entire country to start to like it, and then to turn it into a reason to love China. Now I realize that they are not that good at basketball but making it a point of nationalistic pride has created another way for the government to gain more control by making its people associate a fun recreational activity with this arbitrary plot of land.

Related posts:

1. Just Remember It’s China This Sh*t Happens All the Time

I will be back up and running this weekend after I’ve had some sleep and after I’ve let some of these ideas come to fruition. But yeah thanks for all the support and I love you guys.

~McCoy

No related posts.

My first class starts at 8:25 and is a group of 2-3 year olds. Because it’s the first day of class the kids usually haven’t settled in yet and some will cry for their mothers. This usually will last through my lesson plan. I try to comfort them but usually they get more upset because some random guy is trying to comfort them.

My first two classes I have been teaching the same material, and this week the classes have gone like this: I say good morning to each student and they say good morning teacher. Next come the flashcards. I review the words with the class as a whole. Then I will do a warm up activity like Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes. And finally I finish up with a game like pass the ball and test them with that week’s vocabulary.

Next is my older class. It’s usually a very similar format just with more difficult words. This is another 25 minute class so by the time I’m done with that it’s 9:40 and time for my more advanced class.

International 4 is the name of the class, and I like them the most. Probably because not only do they know more English, but also because it’s a 90 minute class, and I’m more familiar with the kids. In this class I try to teach the words in the first half of the class, then the students drink water and use the bathroom and we play a game during the second part. I’ve been in the habit of picking up the kids and playing with them which has been a great joy.

Then comes my 3 hour and 20 minute lunch. I try to help bring food to at least one of the classes for the kids in order to build rapport with the teachers and the students. After that I eat the free food that they provide which has seemed to get worse everyday I’ve been there but I can’t turn down a free lunch, I can save a ton of money with it.

During my lunch break I’ll usually do some Rosetta Stone lessons, listen to podcasts and read. I have 3 hours why not? This is a pretty good time to just relax and get ready for my last two classes.

My 230 class goes pretty much the same as the other morning classes, but my last class is very different.

My international 4 class is my last class of the day. It’s 2 and 3 year olds that I need to teach for an hour. At first it was really boring but that was mostly because I had no idea what i was doing, but now I’ve realized that they are 2 and 3 and just want to have fun. This has allowed me to open up the class a little more for playing around, and playing more songs. This has made this class a lot of fun and I’ve actually been in the habit of picking up the kids and flying them around the room.

So this all usually ends around 4 and I head home, taking me about and hour, and I veg out and get ready for the next day.

So that is my day. It’s a lot of hard work, but I can’t really complain. I get to play around with a ton of kids. They really are awesome, and I have a lot of fun playing around with them. They give me a lot of room to do what I want, and I hope that I won’t disappoint. For now though I am really loving my job and glad that it’s my first one out of college.

Related posts:

1. My Kids’ Day (Or At Least How I Imagine Their Day Is)
2. Timeline Of My Work Day
3. What Is Jeopardy?

Next they are herded into the classroom where they are fed. It seems like they eat from the time they get in, around 8 until 8:25 when class actually starts.

My first class seems to have less time to eat because they are usually sitting in a circle of chairs waiting for teacher to come. My first class also has a couple of kids who cry for their parents in the morning so they are left in the back of the room with a blanket while everybody else is forced to watch me and my little flashcard act.

Then from what I can tell from the classrooms they do fun things for the next couple of hours, like play with toys, watch videos, play house etc.

Next, another meal comes. In my class before lunch, which is 90 minutes they have to sit through 45-60 minutes of me trying to teach them some sort of phrase, like I like to eat apples, or there are 6 sheep. Followed by a water break and then we play some games like London Bridge (thank you Anderson for that game).

The kids sit and eat attentively, and if it’s anything like Anderson’s school they eat without speaking, but I’m not sure they herd me into an office where I usually spend the next 3.5 hours trying to learn Chinese either from the teachers or Rosetta Stone.

After lunch seems to be a rather long nap period of probably 2 hours from what I can tell. There are little beds for each child in each of my classrooms that are stacked up against the window. I’m not really sure how much sleep they get but it’s usually quite during lunch so I assume most kids sleep for most of the time.

Next if they are unlucky enough to have English after lunch they get me coming in before they’ve finished their after nap snack (usually a piece of fruit). I hate that I’m interrupting meal times for them, but they expect me to come in and teach so I do it. Most of the time the kids will sit and finish their snack while I’m teaching, which I am completely fine with.

A little more English in their faces, and then I have no idea what the other classes do until 4 when it is once again feeding time. One class I actually saw got to go outside yesterday, which looked like a lot of fun to me, my students, and my teaching assistant, as we all stared out the window looking on enviously.

I think after dinner the kids are usually picked up around 5 and are taken home. My last class ends at 4 so after helping at least one of the teachers bring dinner into one of the classrooms I usually just head out to beat the rush hour traffic.

So the only thing that I know the kids get everyday is me speaking a foreign language to them, and 3 meals. Other than that there appears to be a lot of playtime and some calisthenics but I’m not really sure what else. I suppose it could be worse but I’m also sure that it could be much better.

I do have 2 and 3 year olds who would be served better by learning things that you are supposed to be learning at that age instead of just sitting in a classroom playing, but hey they don’t pay me to ask questions. That’s why we write this blog.

Related posts:

1. Timeline Of My Work Day
2. My Day
3. 5 Reasons To Love The Lava Bridge Game

It’s really good food for a really low price, (13 yuan each or 1.90 USD) and also has cheap beers. Below are some pictures of our dinner tonight.

Here’s the inside of our shop.

Here are the dumplings or Jiaozi in Chinese.

Here are the xiaolongbao (which are nothing like the real things in Shanghai, too doughy).

More Jiaozi next to our 3 yuan (44 cents American) beers.

Jiaozi Soup.

The food being cooked outside.

Related posts:

1. McCoy’s Food Corner: Cafeteria Food
2. Beijing: Australian For “Crowded”
3. Chinese Night Life – Part 1

Vocabulary words for the week: 啤酒 pi jiu – beer

冷水 bing shui – cold water

(I’ll put the tones in there later when I figure out how but for now I’m not going to)

These words were very dear to Anderson and I upon our arrival, because we wanted cold water and also beers. See the Chinese have a habit of drinking boiling hot water (probably to kill the bacteria), but being from America we expect our water to be cold. Anyway back to actual food post.

So I found out that they are going to feed me at my school, which is pretty nice, because I can save money by not paying for lunch. I also found out that cafeteria food is actually not that bad. Monday was rice, vegetables, and pork; Tuesday was rice, a vegetable, and spare ribs; Wednesday rice, vegetables, and chicken; and  Thursday rice, vegetable, fish; and Friday was rice a vegetable and chicken wings.

Are you sensing a pattern? Yup that’s right, rice meat and some sort of random vegetable. It’s actually very good though and they give you a lot of food, so I’m not complaining. The kids are also fed the same thing as the adults for lunch but they also get breakfast and dinner, which I find to be kind of odd.

The other problem is that they are fed the same thing for breakfast and dinner. It’s always a soup that has tofu in it for breakfast and something rather similar with rice for dinner. It seems like it would be pretty boring, and it’s also weird that they are fed all 3 meals, but hey, it’s China and they aren’t starving in the fields like in the past so they deal with it.

Anyway my food corner will be better when I start incorporating pictures and get into more interesting foods. While I’m still trying to get settled and on a real schedule I’ve been eating out of the school and the convenient store downstairs. Hopefully this week I’ll start exploring the food more in depth.

Related posts:

1. Hot Water, Still No Internet
2. My Kids’ Day (Or At Least How I Imagine Their Day Is)
3. Timeline Of My Work Day

Anyway so I’ve started at my new school, and it’s pretty awesome. The kids can get pretty rowdy at times but that’s more on me than it is on them, but they are freakin’ awesome. The one problem that I am dealing with is the fact that I have like 120 kids so trying to learn all their names will be quite a task, but I’m up for the challenge.

The one problem is that even within classes some of the kids are on much different levels, so some of the kids are way ahead of the words I’m trying to teach, and others are way behind. This I suppose is a dilemma of a lot of teachers (and is also a problem with schools in general), but there isn’t too much I can do about it. I try to work with the kids who are behind and try not to favor the kids who are ahead (they are usually easier to work with and I have an urge to favor them).

The school that I’m at is much better than I expected. From the stories that I’ve heard about the school they never usually help the foreign teachers, but on the first day my 90 minute class went really well and they brought in a translator so that I could communicate with the other teachers, and they said that they really like me, which means job security.

This is important because teachers tend to be moved around a lot. This means that they could move me out at any time, which seems to happen a lot. I don’t think that I will have much of a problem because as far as I can tell I am doing a pretty good job, and I assume that most of the people who come to China to teach are not here to actually teach. In fact I’ve often come across this with the teachers that our recruiter brought in.

I’ve also talked to other sources who have said the same thing applies for other countries like Korea. Why would you come to China if you don’t like Chinese food, for instance or if you don’t like kids. It really makes no sense. Anyway I’m going to leave you all with the clip below in case this post was terrible. Enjoy!

Here’s a video to entertain you with in case this post was bad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjGfgV7rJHI

Related posts:

1. McCoy’s First Day
2. You’ve Been To China You Know How Things Work
3. Timeline Of My Work Day

My first class was half an hour and it was a group of 5 and 6 year olds. I got them up and moving with Head, Shoulders and then did some body part flash cards with them, and then played a game with them. This class was only 30 minutes and went pretty well considering the circumstances.

The second class went much worse. It was what my placement coordinator called an international class, of 2 and 3 year olds, who speak very little English. The first problem with this, as Anderson pointed out, was the fact that 2 year olds have much more important things to learn. Why the hell are they even in school at this age. The second problem is that the Chinese teachers for whatever reason don’t give a crap about these students.

So I was left basically alone, unprepared with teachers who refused to really help me or the children. I suppose it could have been worse, they could have been ass holes to the students like the ones at Anderson’s school. So I tried as hard as I could to keep their attention and to teach them colors and body parts and did really enjoy it when the students knew what was going on.

The best part of my experience with the second class was when I was saying goodbye to them. They were all very sweet and were telling me that they would see me next week, and were excited to give me a handshake or a high five as I was leaving which I found to be incredibly sweet and awesome.

That was pretty much it for my first day, and I’m getting excited for teaching these kids when I actually have some plans and music for them.

And one other note. I also met another American who teaches at the same school that I am going to be at. We went out for a beer at the end of the day and I asked him his motivations for teaching and what he thought about the kids. The first thing that he said was that he believes that there are no bad children, and we went on to talk about methods for teaching and stuff.

It is refreshing, after seeing so many of the new recruits, and how they don’t seem to give a shit, to meet somebody who when you ask them a question like that, that their first response is that there are no bad kids. It really does make me excited to know that there are other people out there who are doing this for all the right reasons, and realize the impact that we are going to have on these children, as opposed to people who are doing this just to get to China.

So overall a pretty bad day considering the circumstances, but one that affords me great hope for this coming year, and has made me really excited for being here.

Related posts:

1. Am I Making It Worse For My Students?
2. My Day
3. Anderson’s First Day

The original plan was to include all sorts of aspects of Chinese culture into this blog like entertainment so here is the first one. I realize that the new Karate Kid movie is made by Americans for American audiences but it does take place in China, and there are scenes in schools, so I think that it’s apropos to talk about it here.

In case you haven’t seen the newest trailer for the movie here it is:

The [New] Karate Kid Trailer 2

So the new movie stars Jackie Chan, and Will Smith’s son, Jaden (which I never understood why his name is so similar to his mother, Jada’s). Jackie Chan plays Han, the Miyagi, mentor type role, which in this preview seems a bit off. We see Han rescuing Dre Parker (Smith) from a bunch of bullies who are half of Jackie’s size.

In the original Karate Kid movies Morita was small and packed a punch against some high school kids, but here the kids are probably junior high schoolers, and are fighting Jackie Chan. Yes that’s right, Kung Fu master, Jackie Chan. This isn’t high school kids fighting Arnold from Happy Days, this is middle schoolers fighting Jackie Chan. This would be like if I defended one of my kindergarten students from a bunch of other kindergarten students by beating them up.

This trailer held a special interest for me because Dre and his mother fly to China on China Air, (just like Anderson and I) and go to Beijing (just like Anderson and I), which was basically the inspiration for even doing this post. Also there are scenes which appear to take place in the school yard which looks more like the town from Kung Fu Hustle, than any school I’ve been to so far but  whatever.

Other things going on here include Jaden running on the Great Wall…um okay… And him doing splits and ridiculous things with bamboo sticks that look really cheesy. This movie may be pushing things a bit too far but what crappy movie doesn’t these days?

I do have to give credit though to the little homage in the in trailer. At the very end when Jackie is trying to catch the fly you can hear them playing “You’re the Best” by Joe Esposito, which was made famous during a montage scene from the original Karate Kid movie.

All in all the movie looks pretty terrible, but because of the topics in the movie, China, schools, Kung Fu, and because Jackie Chan is in it, I personally will probably see it. However if the trailer is any indication of how the movie will be, it will probably be terrible.

No related posts.

Anyway, today I sat around waiting to hear from the school that Anderson was basically accepted to last night. We were in close contact throughout the day going back and forth on what was going on here in the recruiters offices as well as in the school itself because nobody would tell us anything.

Here are a couple of the conversations that occurred throughout the day:

10 am New Teacher who interviewed with me and Anderson yesterday talking to one of the recruiters: I don’t really think that this is for me so is it okay if I go home? (this was her 2nd day in China)

1215 pm McCoy: I heard the phone conversation this morning. So the head recruiter is going to go down and talk to the headmistress of the school?

Anderson: Forget all that I’m pretty sure the guy under her is about to be deported, and I’m taking over for him. Wait you don’t think that the recruiters…

McCoy: No way. Right, no way?

Anderson: Well we both thought it right?

McCoy: I’m just going to assume that they don’t have that power.

1pm McCoy: So what’s going on [recruiter].

Recruiter: I can’t really say, but you know the guy you met yesterday who used to work for us? He’s being deported.

McCoy: Okay… What for?

Recruiter: Well he got really drunk and broke an ATM. He paid for it and the bank and cops were fine with it but the government has decided to deport him.

130pm Teacher during training: Is there any Chinese mob that we have to worry about?

McCoy (under my breath): yeah the government.

2pm Anderson to McCoy via Gchat: okay teacher 1 is here, and she’s introducing herself to teacher 2… who is about to replace her… wtf…

210pm McCoy via Gchat: is there a Chinese mob somebody just asked

Anderson: government

What is important to recognize here is that the first conversation of the day was a girl explaining how she was in over her head. And then the rest of the day happened.

So I am going to end this post with an explanation of the title of this post. I told my friend, who has been in China on and off for the last 4 years about this. All she could say when I told her was, “just remember, it’s China, this shit happens all the time.”

Related posts:

1. You’ve Been To China You Know How Things Work
2. Basketball In China
3. And I’m Back…

About 5 minutes later the school called and informed us that even though the teachers liked my demo better the students preferred Anderson. This meant that I had to go next door and demo at another school, while our liaison told Anderson to wait either at the McDonalds or the KFC (apparently that’s the US embassy). I interviewed at the next school which went well and it seemed like they liked me but our contact was pretty vague on if I was going to be working there.

Anderson and I went back to the offices of the recruiting group and they called us in regarding housing (no, we have not found housing yet, and yes, we are still in a little 9×9 hotel room, with a 2 foot separation between our beds). Anyway it seems like our placement company wants us to take their housing based on the stipulation that they help me get a job at the school where Anderson had interviewed the day before (that’s right, in the middle of training they brought Anderson, who had no idea what to do during an interview or a demo for the students to interview with the headmaster of a school on his first day in China). Finally, we agreed to take their housing assuming that I get the job at the same school as Anderson.

All of the things that our agency is doing seems pretty weaselly and when we asked, we were told that it will be fine, and they literally said to me “you’ve been to China you know how things work” (take that as you will). So Anderson and I went to the school to demo with another person who is using the same agency as us, who had never had any training before and was actually chosen by the headmaster to go first. This was my 3rd demo of the day (which is essentially running a class on the spot in front of all authority figures in the school and is very stressful and draining).

After her debacle (which actually wasn’t considering she had no idea what to do, she did fairly well), Anderson and I both seemed to do well. Last night they called Anderson and told him that the school wants him to go down tomorrow and observe the school and assured him that they liked me, but they still don’t if they are going to accept me. Now we are forced to play wait and see and if they don’t accept me we’ll be back where we were yesterday afternoon, assuming they don’t screw us. As our contact told me yesterday I’ve been to China I know how things work, which is to say not very well.

Related posts:

1. Just Remember It’s China This Sh*t Happens All the Time
2. My New School (and What’s Been Up The Past Past Couple Months)
3. Timeline Of My Work Day