学校

It's Tuesday. And I love Tuesdays, people. Tuesdays are the beginning of my "second weekend" as I like to call it. And also, any day is better than Monday, right? The major reason I don’t look forward to Mondays is because I have to wake up at “Oh-dark-thirty” (as my dad would say) and spend all day teaching. But ya know? The actual work day isn't all that bad after all! In fact, it's what I want to write about today – my work!

As you all know, I am an English teacher here at HZNU. However, I don’t think I’ve talked too much about what that includes. So, today  I want to share with you my weekly class schedule and give you some details on what kind of stuff I (attempt to) teach these (mostly) lovely students.

Two of my lovely sophomores, Simon & Shamrock!

In my opinion, my work week begins on Sunday – the day for some serious class planning. I take Sunday as the day to be sure all my lessons are prepared for the week, all necessary worksheets and handouts are printed out, and all Powerpoint presentations and/or videos are ready to go. I’d like to say I get most of this done on Sunday morning, leaving the rest of the day to relax, but that would be a lie – I am a procrastinator at heart; always have been; (probably) always will be. I don’t mind, though, because I find that I do my best work under pressure – and there’s no pressure like being responsible for 100+ eager minds every week. I can’t let these kids down! And so, most of my Sundays are spent planning preparing and primping my lessons for the week.

Could you let that face down?
I didn't think so.

Monday then begins nice and early because I wake up at around 5:30 (I wasn’t kidding about oh-dark-thirty, guys!). This is because the school bus that takes me to school comes at around 6:50, which means I have to leave my apartment at about 6:38 in order to walk to the stop in time. I absolutely hate that I have to wake up so early (I have never been a morning person) but I only have to do so twice a week, which is better than some people can say. The bus ride usually takes a little over an hour, getting us into school at around 8:00, and giving us 20 minutes to get to our first classes.

My Monday class schedule is as follows:

8:20am – 9:45am : English Writing II
9:55am – 11:25am : Oral English IV
11:30am – 1:30pm : Lunch!
1:30pm – 2:55pm : English Writing II
3:05pm – 4:30pm : Oral English IV

And the building where I teach most of these classes

Then, at 4:40 I catch the bus back to where I live (another hour+ long bus ride). I spend the rest of the evening exercising at my gym, eating dinner, and winding down for the day.

Das right, y'all... I be exercisin!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I have no classes! Woo! So I take these days to do grocery shopping, other shopping, riding my bike, sightseeing, future-job searching, reading, exercising, attempting to cook, etc. These are usually good days.

My adorable bike! This baby takes me all over town

Last Wednesday, for instance, I biked down to the famous West Lake!
It was a gorgeous day for early March! 

Then, on Thursday, I just teach one class. Fortunately, it’s an afternoon class, so I don’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn for it. Instead, I catch a school bus that leaves at ten after noon and gets me to school at around one.

My Thursday schedule is:

1:30pm - 3:00pm : Office Hours
3:05pm – 4:30pm : Oral English IV

And Thursday evenings are pretty much the same as Mondays!

Finally, it’s Friday! Which is almost as bad as Monday because I have to catch that darn morning bus again…. nevertheless, it is the end of the week, which is always a nice sentiment.

My Friday schedule goes like this:

8:20am – 9:45am : Oral English for Honors College Freshmen
10:35am – 12:10pm : Oral English for Honors College Freshmen
12:15pm – 1:30pm : Lunch!
1:30pm – 2:55pm : English Writing II
3:05pm – 4:30pm : Oral English IV

Again, Friday evening is a lot  like Monday and Thursday evenings. Nothin’ special!
And, finally, Saturdays are a lot like Tuesdays and Wednesdays – awesome. It’s tough to have a bad Saturday.

… so, yes, you read that correctly. I (technically) only have three work days a week. And, yes, feel free to be jealous – I’d be jealous too (and I’m sure I will be jealous of myself  at whatever job I end up with next). However, I’d like you to keep in mind that if you convert my salary to USD, I am technically living below the US poverty line. That should make you feel better.

This should also make you feel better.
You're welcome.

Anywho, let me tell you a little more about those classes I teach. Firstly, each class only meets once a week – this means I only see my students 17 times during the semester (one semester = 17 weeks). All my classes (except the ones for Honors College Freshmen) are taught for the “School of Foreign Languages.” Those students  are sophomores (19 – 20 years old) and are all English majors. This is great for me because this means most of these students have a solid grasp on English, so we can focus on more interesting concepts and topics rather than basic English structure, grammar or vocabulary. The two classes I teach for the Honors College are something I do for a little extra money, and those students come from all kinds of majors- however, they’ve all been accepted to the honors program, which means they are super motivated and extremely enthusiastic. Overall, I’ve been given a great crop of students to work with, which makes this job that much better.

Who wouldn't want to teach them?

In my Oral English classes, we work on… well, Oral English. Or, as some call it, spoken English. Pretty much what happens is I take a theme/scenario and help the students with ways to approach it. For example, last semester our theme was “interviews.” So, we covered job interview techniques/tips and also played around with media interview, which included the students creating and performing their own reality talk shows. This semester, we are doing all types of things in Oral English, including student presentations, debate and discussions; I’ll even be giving students the chance (and by chance I mean final exam grade) to teach the class themselves (which is great, because so many of them would like to be teachers). My most important rule for Oral English is that we ONLY speak English in class… duh! If only that simple rule were simple to follow…

Also, I teach them really important and valuable vocabulary...
I am clearly contributing to society, here. 

Okay, but seriously - I had to do a lesson on swear words because I kept hearing my students using them wrong. And if you're going to use the f-word in my class, you better at least use it right.

As for my writing classes, they are a lot like some of the English classes I took in high school (or, what those classes should have been like – I didn’t have the best English teachers at my school). Last semester, we learned how to write a good paragraph. Once the students got that down, we moved on to the… wait for it… academic essay! Yeah! I ended up being really impressed by the improvement my students showed (you should have seen the writing they gave me at the beginning of the semester… oh man.) So, I decided this semester we’d try some different things. We are going to write news articles, creative short stories, poetry, letters, e-mails… maybe even a blog entry?! I’m excited to see how they do in all these different mediums. Of course, we’ll still be doing some academic writing as well; most notably, we’ll be working on argumentative essays, as well as some prep-work for a mandatory English test (which includes an essay portion) that they’ll have to take in April.

Look at those hard-workers... love 'em!

And this is what happens when I get to my classroom early...

Whew! That’s a lot. But I’m glad I finally gave in and wrote this entry – I like that you all will now have a better idea of what goes on for me here in big-ole China. Makes this life seem a little less far away…

‘til next time, everyone! ZaiJian!