90% done.
Trip Start
Sep 14, 2009
1
88
91
Trip End
Aug 31, 2011
Zhengzhou, Henan, China
Sunday, May 22, 2011
This week I will have one or two days off. I don't know how many nor what those days will be, but I was told on Thursday that this would be the case. They'll tell me sometime this week. I'm surprised that they gave me that much heads up, lol! I'm hoping that I have Thursday and Friday off. The next week there might also be another day off for yet another Chinese holiday. I'm glad that there are a lot of holidays near the end.
My Friday class recently has been pretty good. For the record, none of the teachers like teaching that class. Even the Chinese teachers walk in and dread going in there. In case you have forgotten, the kids are non compliant, they complain that I'm not showing them movies, they break windows, they throw books out windows, they get up and walk around class. They kids that don't walk around are doing work for other classes, then complain when I make them stop it. There's probably 3 people who are actually making a good effort to learn English in that class. It's absolutely the hardest teaching situation I've ever been put into by far. While I don't agree, I fully understand why my roommate has shown at least one Chinese language in the class.
For the past few weeks they were tolerable. Their head teacher gave up on them and refused to do that job anymore (they were too much of a pain and work), so they got a new one. This one apperantly tried to instill some discipline and I thought it was working, so I decided to reward their good behavior with a day of games. I tried to start off with Heads up 7 up. We played the game for about 10 minutes. What I mean is I spent 27 minutes trying to get the class organized, under control, mostly in their seats, not listening to their MP3 player, and not looking at pictures of naked women (yes, this actually happened. He later tried to 'trade' the book for another book by taking the nudie one out of my pocket and handing me another). At that point I gave up and went for backup. I had already kicked a student out for yelling "fuck you" at me (I had repeatedly been telling him for the past few weeks that it was not appropriate to say. Last week I told him the next time he said it I would kick him out. He did so I did). So I returned to my office and asked for backup. Within a few minutes their English teacher was in the room and she went around and started smacking the kids. The only student she didn't smack was the violent kid. Probably a good move for her health. That kid is fearless and is a destroyer of desks (I've personally seen him break one by kicking it). So yeah, not a very good end to the work week. Thankfully I only teach that class once a week, they're my only class that day, and I have time to do yoga after the class before I have to do anything else.
So yeah, not your normal Chinese class. To top it off, when I left one student was yelling at me because I was wasting her money by not teaching her English. I turned around and started talking with her. I basically told her that I wanted to teach them the same thing I teach the other classes, but because they're so bratty I can't and have to think of something to control the class rather than to teach them. She didn't like that. So I told her again that if I plan a lesson that requires 30 people to participate and only 3 have an interest in doing so there's very little that anyone can do. She didn't like that either, but she began to understand. So, I guess I will have to go back with what works for them. Plan jane boring brainless repetition. Well, it looks like hitting works, too, but I refuse to do that.
Otherwise, things have been great!
