FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL FOR NANCY

Today I officially taught 2 oral sophomore English classes at Shandong University in Jinan, China.  I had to pinch myself to realize this was really happening after six months of anticipation. Since Stan didn't actually have a class until Thursday, he was willing to be my moral and technical support.  And I needed it!!  One class had a damaged projector connector so I had to use my jump drive and the school equipment rather than my laptop. Plus having an "experienced" educator in the room was my back-up!!

I was a little nervous until I walked into the class twenty minutes early and found almost the entire class waiting to begin the 8 am class!  We had been told that the Chinese students are dedicated to their school work  and obviously class management would not be an issue.  They all looked so young to me!  I  hoped I could meet their expectations to improve their English skills.  As I smiled and welcomed them I started to feel better about being in the classroom.

I had done a Power Point with 34 slides regarding class expectations, introduction of myself, some class talking activities, etc.  I was worried I would have too little planned to cover the two hour timeframe, but I ended up dropping two parts of the lesson.  That will be something to start with next week.

I also had Stan speak a little German to add some interest.  The students had the most puzzled looks on their faces.  We thought that perhaps someone might speak German since this is a foreign language campus, but no one admitted that they had that skill!  The whole point was that it took Stan two years of living in Austria to start dreaming in German.  That is when you really know the language.  These students don't have the opportunity to practice with native speakers very often so they have to take advantage of any chance to speak English so they can dream in English!

I had the students fill out a card about their goals for the class.  Many want to learn about American culture in connection with becoming more fluent speakers.  Some are more shy, but overall their English is quite good.  I did find out that many of the students had another BYU couple last year, so I may not be able to use some of the materials that we received at our August training.  However, I think that Stan and I can work together to be creative and reinforce some of the same ideas.

Stan and I both have junior writing classes on Thursday.  At least we have a few more days to prepare.  However, it seems that there always seems to be something to interfere....foreign teacher registration took 1/2 day on Saturday... we have to get a resident visa that we understand is a long process and an hour  of travel each way... tomorrow we have to open a bank account because the paperwork just got completed, etc.  China generally operates on a last minute notification so we just have to learn to be flexible.  Previous BYU teachers have said that the best part of the experience is the Chinese students and so far, I agree!

 

Just call me Professor Pace!!