Classroom Happenings

So in an effort to add a little more everydayness to this blog, I’m going to share a couple of fun things that happened in class, more specifically in my Oral English class, this week.

Wednesday afternoons from 2-6pm I teach two consecutive Oral English classes. These are my freshmen students and they are undoubtedly my most excited students of the week. I think this is because they are just starting their college education and so they have yet to be inundated with papers and tests and general college-y responsibilities. During the week of the American Presidential election I taught a short lesson on American government and politics and after our discussion assigned them a 2-3 minute speech on an American President of the their choice. I split them up into two groups of ten students each so that the presentations would take place over two weeks and only take up half of the class period each week. This Wednesday the second group of ten students went and one student chose to give her presentation on George W. Bush. As soon as she pulled up her Powerpoint (interestingly none of them call a Powerpoint presentation a “Powerpoint” but rather they all, including my fellow teachers, say “PPT”) all the students started giggling. On the screen was a large picture of W. Bush. Now there are some pictures of him that I too, would have started laughing at, but this was just an ordinary, presidential picture. I then started hearing whispers of “xiao Bush” spread throughout the classroom. Apparently the Chinese name for George W. Bush is “xiao Bush,” which, if you remember from my last blog entry, means “little Bush.” It makes sense in the context of being the son of H.W. Bush, but it also has the connotation of “cute little Bush” or “little childish Bush.” Fitting, or no? Up to you to decide, but it was certainly funny and unexpected.

After the presentations were finished for the day, I used the second half of class to do a short lesson on Thanksgiving, along with a game and discussion. The discussion included a prompting question of “What are three things that you are thankful for in your life?” I gave them a few minutes to discuss with a partner and then brought it back to the whole class to share their answers with me. I got a lot of the same—thankful for friends, family, and teachers—and then one of the only two boys in my second class stood up to give his answer. He said that he was thankful for his mobile phone, an answer totally out of alignment with all of the other answers I had heard that day. We all laughed and then I asked him “why?” And then, as all my students have an uncanny ability to do, he turned this seemingly superficial answer into something endearing and memorable. He said that a lot of students like himself come from small, countryside villages and are very far away from home. As such, their parents miss them very much and having a mobile phone allows them to be able to stay in contact with their parents, letting them know they are safe and healthy. To be fair, he then followed this up with the second thing he was thankful for being his computer because, and I quote, “I find college life to be quite boring, and I do not like studying, so computer games and surfing the Internet gives me something to do with my time.” I guess Chinese students are not so different from American students after all.

The last thing I’ll share tonight (it is Thanksgiving after all, and Nathan was so kind to surprise me with some nice Spanish wine and Irish cheese) came in response to the assignment I gave my Oral English classes for next week. This is their midterm and it is a 2-3 minute speech, which I have given them ample practice doing, on a topic of their choice. Now I wrote this assignment on a Powerpoint slide because Chinese students apparently do not remember their homework unless it is on the board so they can take a picture of it either with their camera or their phone (seriously, students will pull out a camera in the middle of class to take a picture for their notes instead of just writing it down). On this slide I wrote something along the lines of “Prepare a 2-3 minute speech on a topic of YOUR CHOICE.” This morning I got an email from a student asking, and again I quote, “The topic ‘my choice’ is the main idea. And can I expand it to other topic about CHOICE, such as ‘Never hesitate when you make a choice?’” I thought I had sufficiently explained the concept of the speech in class, emphasizing that they could give a speech on whatever they want—their favorite animal, a place they want to travel to, a sport they like—but apparently the message did not fully permeate. I explained this again to the student in response to her email, asking her to please make sure her classmates understood this distinction but even so, I am looking forward to seeing how many presentations revolving around this supposed topic of “my choice” that I hear next week.