My Schedule

It seems that since classes are more or less as finalized as they're ever going to be, it's about time I broke it down for you.

When we first came here, Russ and I were both teaching the same classes at the same time, which blew, because it meant that both of us had to go to every class, organize it all together (I will admit right now that they were never particularly thorough at that time), and then put up with each other's teaching style. Then, when the high school classes began, the decision came from above that we'd alternate weeks at the two adult sites. Then, after the thievery, they assigned Russ to the hospital exclusively so he wouldn't be going home after dark.

So, at this time, I am no longer teaching at the Baogang Hospital.

Instead, I do...

The Baogang Training Center: Baogang is the name of a steel corporation that has apparently had a lot of influence on this town, which has a very stiff mining background in things like coal and steel. Which is why guidebooks and visitors always come away with the impression that the city is cleaner than it should be. Anyways, I teach here on Tues and Thurs from 7-9pm and Saturday for 3 hrs starting at 2:30. At it's largest, I believe the class is a little over 30 strong. I think most of the students are at least 3 years out of college, and some of them look like they're in their 40s. Not all of them work for Baogang, and there's a mix of ECEs, computer sciences, factory management, and so on, and I know there's at least one journalist. This is currently one of the most challenging classes for me because I can't not care what they think about me. When I get a chance to talk to everyone, it's a lot of fun and I feel helpful, but it's harder for them to understand me (compared to the high schoolers), and their levels vary sometimes to extremes. It's basically the type of class that education experts always warn against-- large and variegated. So individual attention is limited and half of them will get bored sometimes and half of them will be totally lost sometimes. Two vague celebrity look-alikes in this class: a guy who looked a little like a Chinese James Franco the first day, less so since, and a guy who bears a slight resemblance to Noah Wile, if he were combined with my Uncle Chris and a bit more Japanese.

Baogang Yi Zhong: "Yizhong" means it's the #1 Middle School (there are at least 9 of them), and even though it's called a middle school, it's a high school. Especially after Yantai last year, I'm used to there being a zhongxue, middle school, and a gaozhong, high school. But here they're not explicitly high schools. Is there another #1 that's actually a middle school? No clue. But in any case, there's never a misunderstanding, so whatever, it works. This is reputedly the best school in the district, and it's not too shabby. The complex is a bit deeper and more colorful than the Muping Experimental School, and their sports yard is located more to the center. They had volleyball competitions between district gym teachers all last week, so we watched those if we got there early.

I teach there 4:20-5:40, Tues-Fri. There are actually 8 English classes though, so I take one set one week while Russ does the other, and the next week we switch. This means the same lesson for 2 weeks. I guess it challenges me to keep evolving the lesson the whole time, otherwise I'll get way bored. Today's my first time teaching a full class to the 2nd group, which I actually remember as being rowdier, but eh... this group of classes was also the the group that had class in the language lab, which sort of encourages student-teacher detachment. Alice just thinks that it's the students which are worse than my classes from last week, but we'll see today. In any case, my students last week, which I'll call the downstairs students, were pretty awesome.

Sunday High Schoolers: This is a class of about 8 students that meets for 3 hours on Sundays, at 2:30, in Russ's apartment. Of note is that Russ is no longer teaching them, but Mr. Liu doesn't want to move the class over to my place... so I gotta go over to Russ's every Sunday. 3 hours is an insane amount of time to be having class, by the way. It makes me a little nervous when I teach this class. Also, there's one kid who just sort of... stares into space and one girl who looks like she's gonna pass out until you give her a chance to start talking in Chinese, then some switch flips on and you can't get her to stop talking and pay attention to you. There's one huge Jay fan who is excited about talking but sometimes mixes things up, and two guys who like to talk in English and are pretty good at it. One of them has attempted to read Frankenstein and gave up-- no blame there. The other has been downloading Natgeo podcasts from iTunes. I think most of these kids are from #9... some of them are from #1, but dropped the classes we teach there. Is there a #5 component? I might just be making that up.

Saturday High Schoolers: A new development. As of last Saturday, I have a 2 hr class at 7:30 with about 7 high schoolers, mostly from #9, with maybe two from #1. Don't know much about them yet, other than one plays guitar and likes Guns-n-Roses, and one spends all her free time not having free time-- in other words, she's studying and working always.

Anyways, that's it. Monday is my free day.