Saturday, February 02, 2008

Blast to the Past

On this quiet Friday evening, which I am spending alone and indoors, I'm going to take the cosmic hint and work on that foreign teacher's report I've been putting off for... well, an embarrassing amount of time. Let's revisit the Baotou public schools, shall we?

For the fall semester of 2006, I taught at the Baogang #1 Senior High School, or Baogang Yizhong. Someone at some time attributed to this school the honor of being not only the best in the city, but one of the best in Inner Mongolia and the whole region. It had an acclaimed math and science program, and was working on improving its English program. On the walls near the listening rooms were photographs of smiling foreign teachers from an earlier time.

Spring semester, I taught at Baotou #9 Senior High, or Bao Jiuzhong. This school also claimed to be best in the city, as the students would proudly assert. It's possible that their claim was legitimated with the results of that year's college entrance exam, but I can't be sure. In any case, this school was well-known for its English program and focus on the humanities in general.

In both cases, my class was something of an extracurricular-- students freely signed away their recesses to take part in our non-graded courses, which met once a week. The powers that be recommended that the other teachers and I teach on a rotating schedule, which meant that it could be two to three weeks before I saw any given class again. Classes tended to start out large before exams and other commitments pared them down to a few handfuls of dedicated students.

Ok, so maybe I'll work out the introduction last. In any case, so begins a series on English and the Baotou public schools.

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