Teaching

The job that never ends!

/ edebock / 10 Comments

We loved our jobs in China! By far the most fun was the time we spent with the students who were preparing to come to North America to study but this is definitely the first time we’ve brought a student home with us!

Three of my former students are now in Ontario enrolled in ESL programs at their colleges of choice and preparing to enter regular studies there in January. Since they arrived in Canada, I’ve spent lots of time communicating with them via email, Facebook and Skype, consoling and encouraging the one who is having a very difficult time adjusting, cheering on the other two, answering questions and helping them find information on everything from yoga classes to how to make healthy bagged lunches!

Sheila is my fourth student to arrive in Canada and she’s presently sound asleep in our guest bedroom! We picked her up at the Edmonton airport last night after her long flight from China and she’ll be with us for just over five weeks. On January 2, she’ll fly to Windsor, Ontario to begin her studies at St. Clair College.

We encouraged all of our students to spend their first month or two in Canada in a home stay setting to help them adjust to Canadian life and to allow them to practice their English in a home where they would be immersed in the language. Sadly, both girls who chose that option found themselves in homes that didn’t meet our expectations; homes where they were left to fend for themselves and not incorporated into a family atmosphere. They probably would have done just as well or better living in a dorm. That’s not the sort of experience we want to give Sheila!

I’ve waited to start decorating the house and doing my Christmas baking until Sheila’s arrival so that she can join in all the fun. After all, this will be her very first Christmas! The whole family is coming home this year so she’ll experience all the noise and fun of a family celebration.

In the meantime, there are lots of other things we want to show her; simple things like a typical Canadian grocery store and things we take for granted such as how to use the myriad of small appliances on my kitchen counter. There are places we want to take her like West Edmonton Mall and sights we want her to see like the spectacular Rocky Mountains. We’ve also arranged for her to be able to visit our local high school to see and experience how different it is from schools in China.

Before we embark on a whirlwind of activity, however, we’d better let her sleep awhile longer and give her a chance to start getting over her jet lag!

with Sheila in China

with Sheila in China

Graduation day!

/ edebock / 10 Comments

Yesterday was graduation day for our Class A and B kids. The ceremony was short and simple but effective. Richard Guo, founder and president of EIE, was our guest speaker. He commended the students for their hard work this year and challenged them to continue learning and growing as they go abroad to study. Sissi gave an excellent speech on behalf of the students thanking the teachers and her fellow students for a great year. Diplomas were handed out and the students received their yearbooks. Filled with pictures of class times and fun times, these will be treasured mementoes of a very special year.

Following a relaxed time of signing yearbooks and taking lots of pictures, we moved to a nearby hotel for a lovely graduation dinner. It was still early evening when the festivities ended but the students weren’t ready to call it a day so most of us piled into student cars and taxis and headed off to enjoy a couple of hours of karaoke! It was loud and the room was sweltering but it was fun! We knew that several of our girls were excellent singers but some of the others surprised us with hidden talent!

Yesterday was fun but today will be more difficult. Today we say good bye. Yesterday we wondered why the graduation exercises had been scheduled for our second last day instead of the last. Today I’m glad they were. Yesterday there was celebration and laughter. Today there will be tears.

It seems we leave a little bit of our hearts wherever we go, especially when kids are involved. This time though, we may see some of them again as several are going to Canada to study. In fact, we’re almost certain to see one of them.
We’ve laughingly threatened to put someone in our suitcase and take them home with us before but this time we might almost do that! Sheila will be heading off to begin her studies in Windsor, Ontario in January but her college, unlike many others, doesn’t offer its international students a home stay option when they first arrive in Canada so we’ve invited her to come spend some time with us and it looks like she probably will! That’s Sheila in the pink t-shirt under my right arm below.

Okay, I’m off to school now for the very last day and I’m well armed with kleenex for those teary good byes!

Gambei!

/ edebock / 3 Comments

Who knew that I would have my very first taste of Canadian ice wine while living in China? Life is full of the unexpected!

I didn’t expect to meet Richard Guo, founder and president of EIE (Education in English), the company that employs us to teach English at Liaoning Normal University while I was here in Dalian either. After all, he makes his home in Mississauga, Ontario.

The day before yesterday, however, while we were relaxing at home the phone rang and we were informed that Mr. Guo was at the school and wanted to meet us. We were asked if we could come right away and, of course, we did. He started by telling us that he wished we weren’t leaving at the end of this term and that we are welcome to return to China and to EIE at any time in the future. We’d been told that already but we didn’t expect to hear it directly from the top dog! He went on to explain that the company is expanding and that he was actually in China to sign an agreement to begin offering English instruction to nurses in training at Dalian Medical University. If plans proceed as expected, nursing students who study English with EIE will be able to take their first three years of training here and then transfer to an affiliated college in Ontario to complete their degree. After explaining all of this, Mr. Guo invited me to join him at the official signing ceremony which was to be held this morning! That was certainly unexpected!

At 8:30 this morning, Mr. Guo (pictured on the left below), our supervising teacher Cliff, and I met at our school gate where we were picked up by a very comfortable van from the medical university and taken to the new campus overlooking the ocean at Lushun which is about an hour from here at the tip of Liaoning Peninsula. It was a bright sunny morning and the drive reminded me of travelling through parts of British Columbia.

When we arrived at our destination, we were greeted by an English speaking staff member who took us on a short tour of the campus before accompanying us to the very formal boardroom where the ceremony would take place. Cliff and I didn’t really know what to expect but we felt a bit like visiting dignitaries as we were ushered about with great decorum. In reality, I think I was only there as the token Canadian and because I had no classes scheduled until late this afternoon!

Cliff and I had no active role in the actual signing ceremony but we were each provided with a translator to explain the key points of the speeches and discussion that took place before the documents were signed and sealed. Our delegation sat across the long boardroom table from the president of the medical university, the director its school of nursing, the head of its foreign languages department, the director of teaching, the president of a separate but affiliated school of nursing and one or two other important individuals. As soon as the ceremony was over, most of them rushed away to other meetings related to the fact that it’s graduation week at the university. We relaxed over tea until most of us reconvened for lunch in a private dining room with an ocean view.

Lunch was a most interesting affair. It was by far the fanciest and most beautifully presented meal that I’ve enjoyed in China. Though there were a wide variety of dishes, seafood was featured prominently. I’m not overly fond of jellyfish but I took a bit to be polite and it was better than any I’ve had before. The abalone soup, scallops on the half shell and sweet and sour prawns were heavenly. Lunch really wasn’t about the food though. Between delicious morsels, we toasted everyone and everything that had anything at all to do with the new agreement! That’s where the ice wine came in. Richard Guo brought it all the way from Canada for the toast that he proposed! We used a lovely red wine for all the others. We were constantly out of our chairs clinking glasses and declaring Gambei! (cheers!) Even Cliff and I got into the action. When my turn came, I congratulated both sides of today’s agreement telling them that in addition to benefiting them, it will also help alleviate Canada’s nursing shortage which is expected to worsen in the next few years as more and more nurses reach retirement age. I told them that, as part of Canada’s aging population, I appreciate the fact that they plan to send well trained young nurses to help take care of me in my old age!

Gambei!

Life’s not fair!

/ edebock / 10 Comments

One of the original goals of communism was to create a classless society where everyone would be equal. That might sound great in principle, but in reality, it doesn’t work. Like anywhere else in the world, China has the filthy rich and the very poor.

Most of our students come from well to do families. Our university students pay approximately $500 per semester over and above their regular tuition for 70 hours of instruction with a native English speaker instead of attending the university’s regular English classes with Chinese teachers. In China, that’s a lot of money; more than one month’s salary for many people. Then there are our full time English immersion students who are preparing to study abroad. Only the wealthy can dream of giving their child that opportunity or afford the more than $8000 that this year of preparation cost.

With a mark of 95% on the final exam, Grace ended the year at the top of one of my university English classes but she won’t be back in this program next year. Her family simply can’t afford it. Grace grew up in the countryside where her parents own a small plot of land. In addition to growing rice and oranges, they both work seven days a week in a factory.

Grace’s birth was a disappointment. She wasn’t born a boy. China’s one child law allows rural families to have a second child if the first one is a girl so her parents tried again and Grace has a younger sister! She says that her father has accepted the fact that he’ll never have a son but as the oldest, responsibility for her family falls squarely on Grace’s shoulders.

Though her parents have very little formal education, Grace excelled as a student and graduated at the top of her high school class. Unfortunately, coming from a rural school, she didn’t do well on the university entrance exam that students across the country write during their final month of high school. Once again, she was a disappointment.

Just like the people, universities in China are not all equal. Students can’t freely choose which one to attend or even which major to study. Those who do best on the entrance exam are admitted to the most prestigious universities while those who don’t do as well end up at lower tier institutions like the one where we teach.

Grace dreams of being a primary school teacher but she’s studying accounting. She’s doing extremely well. Well enough, in fact, that she’s been recommended for an upcoming exam that could win her a place at a better school of finance but her heart isn’t in it. She’s only studying accounting because her parents feel that it will lead to a better job; one that will pay a higher wage and enable her to pay off their debts and take care of them in their old age. It’s normal for Chinese parents to make these decisions for their children so she doesn’t feel that she has a choice in the matter.

How do we advise a girl like Grace? She isn’t the only one of our students who isn’t able to follow her dream. David loves the Chinese language and wanted to train to teach it but his mark on the university entrance exam was too high for that! Instead, he’s studying physics. It doesn’t help to tell these kids that life isn’t like this everywhere. It is like this in China!

What we did tell Grace was that education is never a waste and that being fluent in English will open many doors for her. Sadly, it may not open the door that she most wants to walk through. I also told her that life’s not fair but I think she already knew that. After all, if she’d been born into a wealthy family, her parents could simply buy her a good job! Yes, life’s like that in China too.

Shingles… but not the roofing kind!

/ edebock / 5 Comments

The itch came first followed by intense pain that had me pacing the floor at night. A quick online search confirmed what I was beginning to suspect; I had shingles! I was almost relieved last Sunday afternoon when the telltale rash finally appeared. Without it, there was nothing to show a doctor; no way to get a definite diagnosis and the medication I needed.

Within minutes of Wendy, one of our helpful office gals, typing the word shingles into her trusty translator on Monday morning, she and I were in a taxi and on our way to the Second Hospital of the Dalian Medical University. One glance at my rash was all the doctor needed to confirm my self diagnosis. He prescribed an anti viral medication as well as a vile smelling lotion to help with the itch and an antibiotic cream to use at night to prevent infection from setting in.

Shingles, or herpes zoster as it’s more formally known, is a reactivation of the virus that originally causes chicken pox. It had been lying dormant in my body for more than five decades waiting to spring into action again! Fortunately, unlike chicken pox, shingles usually affects only one area of the body, in my case a band extending around the left side of my torso at shoulder blade level.

I don’t actually remember having chicken pox. I was very young at the time but I do recall my mother talking about having three children sick with it at once; my older brother, my sister and I. My younger brother missed the first round of all the childhood diseases to hit our home and instead, made a habit of coming down with them when we were on holiday! I remember him having whooping cough in Dawson City, Yukon and mumps at our grandmother’s house. I believe that it was chicken pox that he had while we were camping on Galiano, one of BC’s beautiful gulf islands. I guess I must be following his example by coming down with shingles in China of all places!

Fortunately, I seem to have had a fairly mild case and I think I’m the mend. The blisters have burst and the rash is beginning to heal. The pain, now worst in the morning, eases off after awhile and is easily managed with Ibuprofen.

Though uncomfortable at times, I’ve been able to continue doing everything I needed to do. The blog’s silence this week has had more to do with the fact that I’ve been busy giving and marking final exams than with the fact that I’ve been suffering from shingles. My university classes came to an end this week and for the remainder of the month I’ll have only my students who are preparing to study abroad; just seven hours of teaching a week! No more classes at 8 o’clock on Saturday mornings and no more climbing the stairs to the sixth storey classroom! Even with shingles, life is good!

Field trip!

/ edebock / 3 Comments

Spring… the time of year when teachers often take classes on field trips.

Imagine a field trip where the pupil teacher ratio is 1:1. Now imagine that there are only 4 students, all girls and that they’re in their late teens! I’m sure my Canadian colleagues who are busy herding groups of 20 or more children through museums, historic sites and other educational venues would have seriously envied us today!

This afternoon’s Class A field trip was a "western picnic" partially planned by the girls themselves. We rode the bus to beautiful Children’s Park. I’m not sure why it’s called that. It was occupied mainly by seniors including some in wheelchairs who appeared to be on outings from a nearby care centre, and other than a small playground/amusement park area in one corner, there wasn’t anything specific to appeal to children. It was, however, a lovely spot for a picnic.

In addition to teaching them English, we’re also trying to introduce our students who plan to study abroad to western culture so our menu didn’t include any Chinese food. Instead, we ate sandwiches, potato chips, cookies and miniature chocolate bars. If we could have, we would have introduced them to s’mores but even Carrefour, the French department store that carries some import foods, didn’t have the ingredients nor did we have anywhere to roast the marshmallows.

After lunch, we had a photo scavenger hunt. Each student/teacher partnership had eleven items to find and photograph. The list was, of course, in English. Finding "something fuzzy" is a challenge if you don’t know what the word fuzzy means! I explained to my partner that it meant soft, like an animal’s fur and we set off to see if we could find the cute little puppy that had passed by while we were eating. It was nowhere to be found and I was very proud of Sheila when she spotted the poplar fuzz gathered along the edge of the sidewalk and asked, "Is that fuzzy?" We were the last to return to the starting point with our list completed but we were declared the winners because our pictures were the best! Yay!

Next came a word game. Each of us was shown a word but one person’s was different from everyone else’s. Without giving away it away, we had to take turns saying simple sentences about the word until we could guess whose was different. With word pairs like shampoo and conditioner, bread and cake, and orange and tangerine, it was tricky and the girls had to think hard to come up with good sentences. There was lots of laughter and good-natured bantering and though the senior ladies sitting near us had no idea what we were saying, they clearly enjoyed watching the girls’ enthusiasm.

Yes, this was definitely the most relaxing field trip I’ve ever been on!

The pattern of snack

/ edebock / 4 Comments

Have you ever noticed how often we use the word usually? I hadn’t until I came to China to teach English and immediately noticed that the Chinese always say urally! I have no idea how the r sound crept in but apparently that’s the way all Chinese English teachers teach it. Wrong habits are hard to break and our students still need to be reminded once in a while but after lots of practice they do know how to pronounce it correctly now.

Though urally was one of the most common mistakes made by our students, who have never been taught by native English speakers before, we have encountered many other mispronunciations. Vowel sounds are particularly difficult. It isn’t any wonder considering the fact that one little letter like an a or an o can represent so many different sounds. Sometimes these mispronunciations lead to a complete lack of understanding but we also have a lot of fun with them.

Early in the term, one of my students told me that he liked eating snakes! I clearly remember being somewhat startled but this is China, after all! We’ve eaten bullfrog and catfish, restaurants serve silkworms and there’s one not far from here that specializes in donkey meat, so why not snakes? When I attempted to clarify, however, I discovered that he actually meant that he liked eating snacks! As it turns out, the snake/snack confusion is a common one and has led to lots of laughter in our classes!

Is it any wonder then that the headline "Snacks Dominate the Fashion World of This Early Spring" caught my eye when I picked up the April issue of Sichuan Airline’s in-flight magazine on our recent trip to Jinan. The magazine is published in Mandarin but some of the articles are translated into English. Clearly, they could use a more qualified translator but this particular article was hilarious! Here’s just one tidbit:

"It is the year of the snack, patterns of reptile animals have crawled back to the fashion world of women’s wear in spring and summer, among which the pattern of snack turns out to be the most popular. It seems like designers have already foreseen that the pattern of snack would be a fashion trend, this eye-catching animal pattern is now seen in all fashion fields."

The article was accompanied by photos of clothing with a snakeskin motif as well as snakeskin purses and shoes!

I haven’t been following most of my favourite fashion blogs lately because both WordPress and Blogspot are blocked in China. It’s also been several months since I’ve seen a fashion magazine so I don’t know whether or not snakeskin has caught on as a new fashion trend in North America. I haven’t actually seen it being worn here yet but for those who want to know, apparently the pattern of snack is the newest trend!

A most unusual Easter!

/ edebock / 5 Comments

For the second time in our lives, we’re spending Easter in a country where it isn’t celebrated; where very few people have ever heard of it. This is definitely the first and probably the only Easter Sunday that I will ever spend in a shopping mall!

Our Sundays are usually spent with students and today was no exception. We met Howard and Vicky at noon and caught a bus to Xi’an Road, Dalian’s most popular shopping area. They had chosen a Hong Kong style restaurant for our lunch and what a feast we enjoyed! Our Easter dinner included both roast duck and bullfrog! That’s right, bullfrog! Like us, Howard had never eaten it before but Vicky assured us that it was delicious and, believe it or not, she was right!

After lunch, the guys followed Vicky and I in and out of a few stores before deciding that that was boring and wandering off to a coffee shop to wait for us while we shopped. They had a great time visiting while we browsed. Can you imagine all the English that we used as we talked about colours, styles and fabrics and discussed what we liked and what we didn’t? Our afternoon was much more about spending time together and using the language than it was about shopping but Vicky did buy a pair of bright pink jeans and I bought a hat. It’s not an Easter bonnet but when I wear it, I’ll remember our most unusual Easter.

Of course, Easter wouldn’t be Easter without chocolate. I’d actually been craving chocolate lately and Easter seemed like a good excuse to check out the candy aisle the last time we were in the supermarket! In spite of the muffin top which seems to be growing around my middle thanks to the rice and noodles that make up part of almost every meal here, as well as the mochas that I drink whenever we visit a western style coffee shop, I felt justified in buying chocolate when I did my daily brain training today. As I waited for Lumosity, the internet’s most popular brain fitness website, to load one of today’s activities, I noticed the following quotation

"Chocolate can be good for your brain! Dark chocolate contains flavanols and antioxidants, which seem to be good for long-term brain health."

Of course, Easter isn’t really about what we eat or who we spend the day with. Whether we’re with family around a table laden with ham and all the trimmings or in a shopping mall in China eating bullfrog, as Christians, Easter is at the centre of who we are and what we believe.

As our day comes to an end, yours may just be beginning. I hope that, wherever you are and whoever you’re with, it will be a day of celebration and reflection.

He has risen!

Can I have this dance?

/ edebock / 7 Comments

Richard and I came to China to teach English so what were we doing teaching a group of eager students to do the fox trot early yesterday afternoon?

Like many social media sites, WordPress is blocked in China. I’m delighted that I can continue posting to my blog via email but one thing I haven’t figured out how to do is include links to previous posts. You may, however, have read the one entitled Sunday afternoon in Zhongshan Park that I posted a couple of weeks ago; the one that talked about me dancing in the park with a Chinese gentleman. Pictures of that event quickly circulated amongst our students who were clearly delighted that we would so willingly engage in the activities of their culture. Hearing about this and learning that we love to dance led one of our fellow teachers to suggest that we should consider starting a noon hour dance club for the students. Jesse, a retired science teacher, already offers a rocket building activity twice a week.

We loved the idea and so did the kids. With Bradley’s help, Richard started searching out and downloading appropriate music. Bradley, a bright 23-year-old, is one of my students that we’ve quickly developed a great friendship with. That’s him I’m dancing with in one of the photos.

Though our schedule is much lighter, our English immersion students are in school from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Monday to Friday. They have a two hour break at noon though which leaves plenty of time for a quick lunch followed by a dance class. Ten students showed up for our first class yesterday; five guys and five gals. Perfect, we thought, until we discovered that even though they go to school together every day, most of them were too shy to dance with a member of the opposite sex! They had no problem partnering up with someone of their own gender though and the classroom was soon ringing with laughter as they tried out the steps.

We started with the fox trot because it’s relatively easy but over the coming weeks we’ll be adding the polka and a couple of different waltzes to their repertoire. We’ll also introduce them to the jive. I can imagine already how much fun that will be!

Always a teacher!

/ edebock / 5 Comments

As much as Richard and I have been enjoying retirement for the past few years, we’re definitely having fun being back in the classroom this term. The job isn’t exactly what we expected but in some ways, I think its even better than what we anticipated.

We were hired to teach at the School of Continuing Education at Liaoning Normal University where all of the students are required to take one year of English. They have the option of taking it from a Chinese professor during their regular school day or they can pay extra to take it from us. We teach our university level classes during the evenings and on Saturday mornings.

I have two university classes with 27 to 30 students in each one. Teaching a foreign language to that many students at once is difficult but student motivation is probably a bigger factor in whether or not they succeed. Since attendance accounts for 50% of their final mark, working hard in class isn’t a high priority for many of them. Add to that the fact that, on most days, they come to a two hour class at 6:30 p.m. after having been in school since 8:00 a.m. I can hardly blame them for not being overly enthusiastic!

My university classes are very different from one another. One is made up entirely of students who are art, music and phys ed majors. In spite of the fact that they started learning English in third grade, their knowledge of the language is weak and prying spoken English out of them is like pulling teeth. The other class is made up of academic students who have a much higher level of English. The majority of them are somewhat fluent and they participate well in class discussions.

There are only twelve students in Richard’s university class but their level of English is more varied which presents different challenges in teaching them. Instead of a second university class, Richard spends two evenings a week teaching a class that has become fondly known as the Munchkins. This is a new course made up of 11 and 12 year olds who participated in an English camp put on by our school last summer. The camp was such a success that the parents, who are obviously very keen on having their children learn English, asked for a continuing class for them. Thus the Munchkin class came into being last fall. As a well seasoned grade 5 teacher, Richard was the obvious choice to teach them this term.

We also have two small classes of high school graduates who are spending a year in English immersion in preparation for going to college in Canada or the US. In order to qualify to do that, they must achieve a high score on the very rigourous IELTS (International English Language Testing System) test which is made up of four components; reading, writing, listening and speaking. Richard teaches Reading and a course known as Pronunciation and Idioms to the 7 students in Class B while I teach Reading and North American Geography to the 5 students who make up Class A.

Class A is without a doubt my favourite part of the job. These kids, who range in age from 17 to 23, are absolutely delightful. They are the ones who are eagerly taking advantage of every opportunity to spend time with us outside class soaking up the language and trying to learn as much as they can about our lifestyle and culture. In addition to being our students, they are quickly becoming our friends.

Though it may sound as if we’re very busy and though we do have classes at various times between 8:00 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. five days a week, our actual time in the classroom is equal to approximately a half-time teaching assignment in Canada. There’s preparation and some evaluation on top of that, of course, but all in all it’s a pretty sweet retirement project!

(Pictured below: our first meal with some of my A students. Known as hot pot, we cooked various meats, tofu and greens in the steaming broth in the centre of the table. It was delicious! The young Caucasian gal is Courtney, the only young teacher on our staff of six. The rest are golden oldies like us.)