Teaching Children.

My job is teaching English as a foreign language to children here in Lishui, China. I work, and live, at a really nice boarding school. Before coming to China I had read a bunch of horror stories about working for horrible schools who take advantage of foreign teachers, and living conditions that were deplorable. Neither happened to me... thank God! I have a great one bedroom apartment that is fairly new with modern fixtures and furnishings. It is extremely quiet here, in the apartment building, because I'm the only one living in it, all the other units are vacant. My coworkers are really nice, especially my "helper" Janice, she is the one in charge of making sure I am doing okay.

When I accepted the job, and arrived in China, I was under the impression that I was going to be teaching high school kids. Boy, was I wrong. When Janice took me to my classroom that first day, and I saw the little children, my first reaction was, "What the...!?!, Oh s**t!" I had absolutely no experience with children, let alone teaching children. That was then...

The children are ages six to eleven and they are super cute! I'm having a lot of fun, and some frustration, with them. They seem to like me; they scream my name whenever they see me, hug me, hang on me, make me little drawings, give me stickers and candy (and their colds!), show me their new pencil cases and headbands, and like to talk to me (whether or not we understand each other doesn't seem to matter to them). All in all, they are great. However, there are those few who ruin it for the rest of us!

Me and Laura. She was so sleepy and just kept hugging me!

Me and Wanda.

Me and Coco.

This is Eason. He is so funny! I asked, "How old are you?", his response was, "I am nine years old. No, I am nine years young!" As he smiles and puts his hands on his hips.

This is Chloe.

Here is Wanda again. She is super sweet! She sings the loudest in class, and is so off key I think my ears will bleed! I love her enthusiasm!!

Each class has it's trouble maker, some classes have a few, the frustration I have is trying to discipline those that don't pay attention, cause distractions, hit, bite, and kick their classmates, and in general are "BAD". I have tried so many different ways to get everyone to pay attention and behave properly in class; star charts for good behavior, writing good and bad names on the board, bribing with candy and small toys, etc. Right now, I am rewarding the three best behaved students with play money, they receive a dollar and when they have three dollars they can "buy" a piece of candy from me. It only works with the kids that are usually good, the bad ones are still bad! I make a point to praise the trouble makers when they are being good or have done something correctly, but it doesn't seem to help much. If anyone has even the smallest suggestion to help me out, please comment and I will try it!!

It is the beginning of the hiring season, in the ESL/EFL world, for the next school term which starts in September. I was just asked what my plans were and if I wanted to stay here for another school year in Lishui. My answer was, "Yes!", I really like it here so far and I really like the kids I teach. I will have the same students that I have now, so perhaps the stability of having the same foreign teacher will help those that have been a bit of trouble (many foreign teachers only do a year and then move on to other countries in order to travel the world). I'm excited about staying here longer, it will give me a chance to really get to know China and perhaps I can learn some Chinese (my job is teaching English, and when people see me they want to practice their English, so I haven't learned but a few words of Chinese so far).

Did you see that me and the kids are bundled up? Not only am I wearing my down coat, I have a scarf and a sweater on underneath! This was just this past Thursday, which was two days ago, and today the weather is beautiful. Check out the posts, A Beautiful Day.

Here are some pictures of the school...

The view from my office window of the front gate and courtyard.

It may have been sunny, but it was freezing!

These are classrooms. My classroom is at the end of the hall on the third floor.

These are also classrooms.

The hallway on the seventh floor where my office is.

It's raining, it's pouring!

Looking outside, from the second floor hallway.

The view from my classroom window, on the third floor. That is the pool in the middle, and on the right is the cafeteria and gymnasium building. The buildings on the left in the distance are the dormitories.

The sun is coming out! Can you see the rainbow above the mountains on the right?

The sports field and dormitories. The building in the back, on the far right, that you only see a bit of, is where I live.

Here is a video of my class and another combined, the other foreign teacher was out getting her residence permit renewed, so I had a large class. The class is working on some letters and phonics. I supplement their lessons with videos and songs from www.dreamenglish.com. Towards the end of the video you will notice some students holding up their books, they are mimicking the aliens in the video who hold up signs with the letters on them. See what I mean about the kids being cute!

This is a video of my class only, singing "It's a dog!", by www.dreamenglish.com. That is Janice walking around, you can hear her tell the class in the beginning that I am going to video them so they all need to sit up and sing.