Yunnan Stories 云南故事

Today I observed another fellow’s lesson. A newbie as he is,his passion and vitality is what I pretty much envy. Counting him in, I have sitted in on no less than 10 teachers’classes up to now.It is beyond doubt that I have learnt a lot from these observations.

In gerneral, you need make a special appointment with the teacher you wanna observe. It’s also ok you go to his or her office during the break between 2 classes—-Normally, they agree on the spot.These teachers are just so amiable,easy-going and confident－－－more than glad to show their authentic and natrual teaching styles. Nevertheless, they are rather modest,insisting you should leave some advice after the class ended. Through this blog,I wanna make a review of the lessons observerd in the past 3 months.

The fellows I observed were more than meticulous in imparting their knowledge, not only orally but also on the chalkbord. Occasionally,they cracked a reserved joke to liven up the tedious class. Most of them had the relaxing expressions and soft eye contacts with the students. "Any questions?" is the sentence I heard the most in the observations.

The students. Yes, the students were the most attentive in the world. Especially the girls. Hitting the books means almost everything to them. According what I saw, these lovely and honest kids kept joting and joting for fear they would miss any single word.Infrequently, sporadic responses were heard, which was probably the only interaction.

Yes, it was far from an interactive or dinamic classroom, bringing me to 20 years back—–shockingly familiar. Basically,there is no communication in classes between teachers and students, nor was there  among the students themselves. Maybe the teaching pattern was suitble for the local situation.That’s why in such atmosphere, I didn’t see the expected boredom but their hunger for learning.They were just so easy to please—–All too often,a silght digression from teachers was enough to relax or stimulate these lovely kids.

To top that off, I made a rough estimation about TWO TIMES in the clasrooms—one is the speaking-english time and the other is student-speaking time in a 40-minute class. The former was around 10 minutes,of which 99% was spent in reading aloud the materials. The latter was miserablely little 5 minutes or so, of which nearly zero was speaking English in the real sense. To be a teacher-centered class or a student-centerd class, that’s a question.The both are hard.

That said, I am by no means targeting something or somebody in this post cause I DO have the same problem here. Instead, I respect my fellow teachers and their teaching strategies. I like the local kids and their never-ending fighting moral. I only wanna seek a possibillty on how to hit two birds with a stone. That is, can we make our students smarter in learning English, in a more efficient way?

The people in the photo (from the left) are my shanghai school’s Party secretary Mao, me, Fengxian Education Board’s three leaders—-section chief Tang, director wang and and another section chief wang.

The day finally came, to which we had been looking forward for a while. 

Yesterday director Wang and his party of 10 people came over from Shanghai to see us and they left this morning. It is so exciting to reencounter our folks 3 months later not in our hometown but in a place which is more than 3000 kilos away. We talked a lot and had tons of group photos. It was clear they were as thrilled as us. After a visit to our dorms came the unforgetable dinner party, where everyone drank and chat in a friendly and warm atmosphere. Our Honghe hosts even sang many songs for all the Shanghai friends, among which was the most classical ‘Welome to Honghe" . Amazing.

Our leaders made light of trudging for thousands of miles to see us in person, which in itself was a great acknowledgement to our jobs here and gave us enormous encouragement.  We knew they were very concerned about our life here from the intimate conversations. Before leaving, they sent us some money and asked us to take care. In return, we reassured our leaders that we wouldn’t fail to live up to their great trust.

Bon voyage.

2006 marks China’s 22nd Teachers’ Day. It is also my 12nd AND probably my most unforgetable one.

What I mean by" most unforgetbale" is that I experienced the most unique banquet here in Honghe No.1 high school. As usual, the teachers and staff could possibly recieve some good wishes or hand-made cards from sudents like everywhere else. And in typical fashion, we attended a celebration where schoolheads delivered some speeches and organised some programmes. That was nothing special and I expected that something different should happen here. This is Yunnan after all , and this is my first Teachers’ Day spent in a place which is famed for its richest minority cultures in China.

Sure enough, I saw a most spectacular teachers’ banquet in my life . When arriving at the site,we shanghai teachers were all awed and very very excited to see such a huge feast. It involved so many activities such as countless toasts and cheers plus dances and songs. Oh, I forgot to mention that the banquet was held on a basketball court. There were 50 tables in all， which were lined in order like a chessboard. Needless to say, the court was packed to the brim, for all the teachers and staff including the retirees and their kids plus some big guns from town. This was our own fetival, anyway.
            

Adotted on the aisles between the tables were the rice high piled in the bamboo-weaved baskets. We had 8-9 dishes per table plus baijiu and eveyone beamed. It was not only a physical feast but more like a feast for our eyes at that point. So without any imposed hints, Me and the other shanghai teachers understandingly fished out our digicams.
  
The most fun part was when some local teachers approched and sang us their folksongs . The voice was really touching and the liric was that moving. We were not so much intoxicated by the wonderful music as the irresistable hospitality.