First Day of Teaching—Ahhhhh!

First day of teaching in China and I’m sick as a dog—hacking up my lungs, blowing my nose every five seconds, and generally feeling miserable. Alas, there is no rest for the only foreign teacher, so I marched on red-nosed into my first fourth-grade class.

I had planned out this power point with a few rules, some pictures of my family and hometown, and some of my favorite things—food, color, sport, etc. to see what kind of vocabulary the kids knew. To my relief, Chinese technology did not fail me, as it usually does, and the power point worked! Hooray! On the downside, I’m not sure my fourth graders understood anything I said. Luckily their Chinese teacher was in the room to explain, but I got a lot of blank stares. Pictures were my savior, however, and they oooed and awwwed at the picture of my house and my dog. They thought my two-story, white stucco house was huge, and I guess it is compared to their apartments. They also love animals, and my little Yorkshire-Maltese dog was a hit on the cute scale. Next we moved on to making name tags for their desks with pictures of their favorite things. (See pictures on right from my 5th grade class). The fourth graders were a little unsure about this, but the 5th graders loved it.

Also let me note here that Chinese classrooms do not have air conditioners — only fans and only fans over the students desks, not the teacher’s podium. So not only was I uncomfortable because I was teaching for the first time and teaching for the first time while sick, I was also uncomfortable because I was sweating through my cute flowered teacher’s shirt. Needless to say, I was soaked by the time I finished teaching—probably not an attractive first impression for my students.

After getting through my first class, I dried off, recouped for an hour, and prepared for the other three 5th grade classes I had to teach. Lucky me, my first day of teaching fell on the day I’m scheduled to teach the most classes. No time to complain, however. A few cough drops later and I had to suck it up and teach the other three. The home room teacher of the next three classes also happened to be my contact teacher, and she made sure to help me explain in Chinese anything the students didn’t understand in English. The fifth graders were also much more knowledgeable. So, power point working and Chinese teacher at hand, the next three classes were a breeze compared to the first.
Tomorrow I teach my first sixth grade classes. Wish me luck!

(Below: Picture of my school from the front gate)