Rock's Going to Kentucky!

Hi there!

We've got some fresh news straight out of the People's Republic! Our liaison at Yueyang Number One Middle School will teach Mandarin this coming school year in America! That's right folks, Rock's coming to America! So visit her, dammit!

Now, Rock's been jealous of our 'free and wonderful' lifestyle ever since Melissa and I got to China, so she somehow found a way to do what we are doing in China, except in reverse. She interviewed against two hundred fifty other teachers at Bizarro WorldTeach in Beijing and was selected as one of sixty teachers to teach in America. Just a few days ago, she found out that she will teach in three schools in Carrollton, Kentucky, and I've got to say that I'm a little disappointed about her placement, but don't tell her that! She's excited as ever to live in the countryside, and we're respecting that by putting as positive a spin as we can on Kentucky. We have sufficiently filled her head with visions of Kentucky Derby horses galloping across bluegrass fields and splashing through rivers of bourbon. That is what Kentucky is like, right?

Anyhoots, she arrives at the end of July, and we're already planning on taking a trip down to see how's she's doing (with our bottomless pockets? umm...). We think she'll be the first authentic Communist to grace that part of the country, so it'd be interesting to see how well she fits in. Aside from that, we're interested in how she does on her driver's test. I've read somewhere that she needs to get a Kentucky driver's license within thirty days, or not at all. So, to prepare for this, she's taking driving lessons here! She pays a single (large) fee for the entire year, and she can go to the driving school whenever she wants. The catch is that she must wait for the countless others in front of her to get their lessons before she can get her ten minute lesson. Sucks, huh? Well, she's got time, I guess.

On an unrelated note, this whole ban on Blogger is starting to chap me all over. I must deal with this forthwith! Perhaps a new weblog provider is in order? I'm starting to seriously think the answer is yes.

Good Lesson Plans

Hi again,

Melissa and I have been teaching oral English in China for almost an entire school year, and we've come to realize what works in the Chinese classroom and what doesn't work in the Chinese classroom. Actually, it's more of what's the easiest to do in the Chinese classroom... We're lazy!

We received a few weeks of training right before we joined our school last summer. In this training, they told us to divide the class into small groups for something called 'student-centered learning.' This didn't really work for a few reasons...

First off, to be able to accomplish this on a continual basis, we need complete control over our students, which is nearly impossible because a lot of them honestly don't even understand the words that are coming out of our mouths. Secondly, we are not regarded as real teachers by the students because we are not able to give them grades that count. Some students regularly sleep, read magazines, play games, listen to music, talk and generally goof off during our classes all because we don't grade them. We have to discipline them more than any other teacher, but we have the least sway in getting them in any real trouble. If we did decide to grade them, it would only be in the hopes of getting them to take our classes more seriously, and that's a gamble that we don't really want to try due to the fact that we would each have to grade over 700 students. This brings me to my third point, which is that there are over sixty students in each of our classes, so if we want to get them into any group activity, it's a lot of work. This means that we have to make sure the students are actually working (most of them are not), and we have to explain the instructions many times. Lastly, we've found that asking our students to be creative tends to be a headache. Having them 'imagine' anything in a group is a terrible idea because it's not only difficult to explain to the students, but it's also disappointing to hear their unoriginal ideas after all of the help we gave to them.

Okay, so you've heard about what doesn't work. Now, you will hear about what does work for the lazy oral English teacher. First and foremost, competitions are always a plus if they are accessible enough for even the slowest students. Competitions grip our students' attention almost as much as Kung Fu Panda! However, we need to go into the classroom with a lot of energy at first to get them to pay attention to the rules. After that, the hard work is generally over!

Secondly, games that involve the entire class are usually a good idea if the game is easy enough. The students' abilities vary wildly in each class, so we find it best to keep the game simple. When the entire class is involved (or is split into two or three teams), certain students are less shy about speaking. When we involve the entire class, we get the opportunity to force the weakest speakers to participate, who would be overshadowed by the stronger speakers during group-based activities. Most importantly, however, is that games that involve the entire class force our students' attention on us, rather than on their peers. It's much easier to manage a class that is focused in a single direction, rather than a class that is focused in twelve different directions.

We're thinking about posting some of the lesson plans that have worked in the past on this blog in the hopes that they may help someone, but Blogger is blocked in China, so that may have to wait.

What can I say? We're lazy!

Blogger Blocked in China

UPDATE: I can now justify align, bold and hyperlink text. This proxy business isn't exactly user-friendly! Next stop, pictures...

Hi all,

As far as I can tell, China has decided to block Blogger. For the time being, I'm posting on Blogger through a proxy site that allows me to bypass the censors. It's not ideal, but it works so far (I think). Also, Youtube has been blocked in China for the past two or three months. It's really getting annoying considering the amount of time Melissa and I spend on the internet.

This is the first time that I haven't been able to access my own blog via regular methods, and I've got to say that it's much more infuriating than I originally expected it to be. There are just so many things I'd like to say about this, but the one thing that I'd like to leave you with is that I now hate Jackie Chan.

Growl,

Cullen

Rongjiawan Remembers the Sichuan Earthquake

As you probably know, an earthquake hit Sichuan province on May 12, 2008, killing over 69,000 people. One year later, all of China remembered this event by organizing a moment of silence at 2:28pm, the exact time that the earthquake began. The reaction to this anniversary at our school, however, was the complete opposite of silence.

The day before the anniversary, a couple of firetrucks rode into school with their sirens blaring. This sound accompanied a cacophony of other loud noises, such as an air-raid siren and the clamor of excited students. It was like some sort of crazy fire drill on steroids! I thought this event noteworthy enough to brave the summery heat and snap a few long-distance shots. Despite this, we later learned that this was simply the practice-run for a real emergency evacuation drill.

Two days later, the school was buzzing with anticipation of the drill. I was extra-excited because I learned that all afternoon classes were cancelled (and I hate one of those classes). Our teacher friends told us to stand outside so we could be there for the beginning of the exercise, but since we're lazy we went back to our apartment instead. All of a sudden, the air-raid siren started blaring once again, which we took to be our cue to go outside, and this is what we saw:

Pretty crazy, right? The recordings are a little bit awkward because the audio picked up all of our banter, but do your best to ignore that. The students flooded out of their classrooms for a long time, even after the video ends. Next, the firetrucks arrived at the scene to set up their hoses:

And this is what happened:

Remember the students trapped at the top of the school? Well, here they are:

And, finally, our hero makes a dramatic descent down the side of the building:

The fire department then decided to demonstrate how to use a fire extinguisher by putting out a bunch of fresh trashcan fires.

I kinda wish they would do that a little bit more often... I feel like trash fires are everywhere, everyday, constantly stinking me in the face! I mean, people around here get rid of trash by setting it on fire! You'd think that the RJWFD would be busy all the time, yet I never see them! Well, after the drill, I realized that Melissa and I were something of a side performance. I should've known!

We were asked by a Hunan television camera crew to give them our impressions of the emergency drill. As you can see from the picture I looked GREAT. And I told them I didn't need any time to prepare any remarks. So I rambled and rambled about how totally wicked awesome the emergency drill was until I knew that if I said anything further, it could only make me look worse. Ahem. Then they interviewed Melissa (she declined to be pictured here), who eloquently restated what I was trying to say. She ended up giving our liaison a little bit more ammunition for the Chinese translation.

All in all, t'was an exciting day.

Cullen

Good Night, Sweet Prince!

Let us take a moment to fondly look back at our times with hot dog man. If our new banner warms our hearts even half as much as our beloved motorcycle vendor did, then we are in good shape. 

Zwischel is adapting to the warmer weather by updating its look. If you have any ideas to make this blog more attractive, let us know in the comments section.  

Cullen

Violence Strikes Yueyang

About a week ago, Melissa and I started noticing posters of a boy's face plastered all over our town. Our liaison, Rock, and her husband, William, confirmed to us that the boy in the posters was a missing child. William said that he could have been taken, maimed and forced to beg for money, like in Slumdog Millionaire. Apparently, that kind of thing happens in China. I found this strange, because I had been led to believe that China is a safe place with little violent crime. Moreover, I had been led to believe that children were revered as precious beings due to the one-child policy. Perhaps I was a bit naive.

Rock came over last night to meet our boss, who was spending the night. We had a lovely conversation about the difference between China and America. Then, a little out of the blue, Rock told us that Rongjiawan is becoming less safe. When asked why, she told us they had found the missing boy. His strangled body had been found in an abandoned communications building just outside of our school's back gate. This news hit us pretty hard. Not only do we live close to that crime scene, but we had seen that child's face on the posters. So, it wasn't hard for us to imagine how he must have looked when they found him.

Rock must have been encouraged by our apparent dismay, as she continued to tell us something even more insidious. She told us that a Yueyang city taxi cab had recently been found with a blood-soaked interior. A few days later, the taxi driver's severed head was recovered. She told us that a conspiracy of Rongjiawan taxi drivers had killed the Yueyang city taxi driver as a message. Apparently, the Yueyang city taxi drivers had been encroaching on the Rongjiawan taxi drivers' business. I don't have any idea where she came up with this information, but it sure spooked the Hell out of us. From now on we will think twice about hiring a decapitating taxi driver.

We did not sleep soundly that night.

Cullen

Chinese Haircuts

Sometimes your hair grows long and gets in the way of your personal style. Sometimes you're in China when this happens. Recently, Melissa and I experienced both of these. Melissa wanted to get a sweet new perm, and I just wanted to be understood (by the hair-cutter). So it was off to the hair-place!!! But not the one downstairs. Prob mean of us to neglect the barber, but fmeh... don't care.

I got my massage/haircut in Yueyang and I waited for Melissa... and waited... and waited... and waited... and [four hour time lapse] finally the hairist finished! Melissa's perm is super-cool! Hair-man used a little extra TLC on this one. Here's a shot of it:

Ain't she so sweet?!?!? I'm jealous. must... get... perm...

But I got a killer do myself! Wanna see?? It's soooo...

AWESOOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!! My students can't even handle my revived sense of personal style. I now feel like I can comfortably 'rock out' in class. It's like a bright, shiny star of spikes and hair gel.

Also, that is Ronjiawan out that window and not some classy window shade.

Cullen