My Life as A Substitute English Teacher

As some of you may know, I decided this past semester to focus on studying Mandarin thereby cutting my teaching hours down to afternoons when my company needs a substitute. My company, BSK, *shudder*, has about 50 teachers spread out in public schools throughout Shanghai, and at least 3 or 4 times a week I’m called in to sub somewhere. The beauty of the situation lies pretty much in the fact that I never see the same kids twice, thus eliminating any need to make any sort of preparations or plans ahead of time. I have my staple of games, activities, and sing-a-long songs that I rotate through, but mostly it’s all about me.

For the first half of the class or so, I divide the class into teams, and tell them they can ask me any question they’d like. Chinese students will do anything if there is competition involved, and if I mention the word “stickers” or “prizes” I open myself up to the possibility that kids will literally pee their pants in excitement. The first question is invariably, “What’s your name?” to which I reply, “Chinese name or English name?” They perk up a bit, and I write my Chinese name in characters on the board. The students are not used to their English teachers knowing any Chinese whatsoever, so simply writing my name, 龙海, generally elicits fits of applause. I take a bow, and have them eating out of my hand in the first five minutes of class. This usually makes the next 30 minutes much less painful. Usually.

Then, depending on the grade, we move on to other activities. If it is a fourth or fifth grade class I usually put a writing prompt on the board. This gives me a bit of quiet time while they write, and then another 15 or 20 minutes of class used up by having the kids present what they wrote up front, all for points of course. My standard prompts are, “If I had all the money in the world, I would…” and “If I had no money at all, I could still…” It’s fun to see how creative the kids are, but usually its mostly the same, “I would buy the school” “Help the poor” “Buy many delicious KFC!” Yes, if I had unlimited funds, you’d find me whiling away my time eating a bucket of wings, too. The no money responses lean towards, “Still happy everyday” “Eat from rubbish bin” “Sleep all day.” But every now and then I get a class with a weird dynamic to it. Last week it centered around one boy Norman, who was absent that day. The first boy stood up and said, “If I had all the money in the world, I would buy AK-47, kill Norman.” Everyone is laughing, and I glance nervously at the Chinese teaching assistant who is also laughing heartily. I suppose in China this is indeed a fanciful and far-fetched idea, so a zero-tolerance policy is not needed. Moving on. The next girl says, “If I had no money at all, I could still make Norman go to girl’s toilet.” I find this kind of funny, and true, so she gets two point. I tell the class to please refrain from any more Norman jokes, but no one listens, and the next boy stands up and is sending Norman to Mars with all his money. One by one they diss on him, and eventually they have me hating Norman as well, and we find the rest of class has sped by. Teaching is fun.

For younger kids, I tend to play the “Opposites Game,” which isn’t really a game at all, I just award points and they get confused. All I do is say and write a word on the board, and the first person to tell me the opposite gets a point. Pretty simple, until afterwards I give two points for making a sentence using both words. This usually leads to some entertaining responses. The first kid will invariably say, “I am thin, but [insert token chubby kid's name here {usually Tony}] is fat!” The kids are laughing, and no one seems to take offense. Next, someone will usually follow up, “I eat healthy food like rice, but Tony eat unhealthy food like McDonalds and KFC.” Tony is laughing too, so I just let things continue because a substitute teacher means a goofing off fun day, right?

Then if I have a few minutes to spare, we’ll play another simple game where I put a long word up on the board like “Chocolate,” and see how many other words kids can find using those letters. I used to classify this as only mildly entertaining as the students rarely are able to see beyond “tea,” but every now and then I get a surprise. Like last week when one fourth-grader found “anal” in “California,” and I found myself conflicted between scolding him and awarding bonus points.

Teaching is funny.

Back At It

Today marked the start of another semester, and gasp! back to the “grind.” I put this in quotes, because people always seem to think my “grind” seems more leisurely than theirs, but dammit, working part time is enough in my book.

Quickly, here’s whats new before I go into further detail:

-We had a much needed month long break from teaching (read: being a white clown), while the students went of holiday for Chinese New Years. A friend of mine, and fellow teacher did a Google search “cheap flights from Shanghai,” came up with the Philippines for about $100, so that’s where we went. Much more on that later.

-Then the parents came, and we had a great 2 weeks traveling through the 3 Gorges Area and seeing the Shanghai sights.

-I have a new part time gig freelance writing for a website called www.bizcult.com – Basically there are about 5 posts a day from me and the guy who started it, dealing with doing business in China, and how it is related with cultural and current affairs. It is quick, snappy writing, so even if you don’t personally have an interest in the business climate of China, you may find it interesting as well. Check it out!

-I’ll be teaching again just part time in the afternoons now, and also taking Chinese lessons every morning for about 3 hours. I have found that I must somehow subconsciously miss the structure that school provides, because I have been looking forward to this for a while now. Who knows, maybe the ARMY is next?

So that’s the basic gist of my life, not that it affects you in any way probably. Anyways, when I pulled out my old book of lesson plans this morning, I came across something that I had meant to post earlier.

On the last day of class last semester, I was told to give a written test to my 5th graders. No guidelines or anything, they just wanted me to assign some sort of letter grade to these kids who saw me I’d say on average 30 minutes every two weeks. Needless to say, I didn’t feel very vested in their actual progress, so I thought I’d at least try to entertain myself during the test.

Here are some of my favorite responses. And don’t take this as me mocking, well, belittling their abilities, because they are half my age, and speak English twice as well as I do Chinese. Really I just found them to be creative, if not downright crafty. Case in point:

Question 6) Define “reflection”

Jimmy: “‘Reflection’. This word is in our book”

Question 10) Write a few nice things about me.

Favorite responses: “Kyle Long is very handsome, he has golden hair.” Ok, shameless ego boost, but I’ll take it where I can get it.

Rudy went in a different direction with this one, and took it a little bit more literally. “Kyle Long lives in the USA. You eat breakfast everyday. You eat dinner everyday.” Cut to me bringing my red pen out for this one.

Question 9) What types of food are healthy for you? Cindy: “I like the fish. Eat the fish are comfortable. They are nice but I usually eat them.” GOD I love Chinglish.

Last Question) If you had all the money in the world, what would you do? Ralph started down on the right path, but probably should have used an eraser, as this is what he literally wrote: “I will give Kyle Long eighty fifty thirty percent. I will give my parents 40%. I will only give me 30%” Thanks Ralph, your grade is now an A, B, D.

Alright, more posts to follow shortly. Must go study for my Chinese placement exam tomorrow.

Chinese Puzzle

This probably won’t be of much interest to the people reading who actually speak some Chinese, but, you never know.

In Chinese, each individual character has its own meaning. For example,
hao=好＝good.
But, if you put the character together with another one, it usually changes the meaning altogether. Example, haoxiang= 好像＝ appears/looks like

Anyways. I’m not sure why this happens (maybe do to how ancient Chinese is?), but for some nouns where Chinese previously had no word for it, they just kind of put two words that describe it together to take on the new meaning.
Example: Hand手 + Machine机 ＝ Cellphone

Try your hand at figuring out what nouns these combos are describing: (answers at bottom).

1. Sour Milk
2. Safety Hat
3. Electric Brain
4. Beautiful Country
5. Dragon Head
6. Pulled Stomach
7. Soft Glass
8. Invisible Lenses
9. Roasting Box
10. Fire Car

1. Yogurt
2. Helmet
3. Computer
4. America!
5. Faucet
6. Diarrhea
7. Plastic
8. Contacts
9. Oven
10. Train

Ok, I’m a dork, but these are kinda interesting, no?

I guess this can make learning Chinese a bit easier, because once you learn tooth, and doctor, lo and behold you’ve got dentist. But honestly, when are you ever going to assume that people will understand that.

Anyone have suggestions for some new additions to the lexicon??

Blue Steel Called

Normally, when Chinese people come up to you on the street, it’s because there is a deep-rooted notion that all white people have money, and the Chinese people have a deep-rooted belief that they are somehow entitled to a portion of it. They may be new to capitalism, but they are quick learners. I’ve all but completely tuned out the nonsensical shouts of “Hey, you need shoes? DVD’S. I have watches.” Or, “North Face. Special price for you. Just you.” Yes, that is a special price indeed when you try to charge me 20 times what it is actually worth. Then there is the more subtle, “Where are you from?” line, which inevitably leads to the starving art student story, whereupon they lead you to a back room, give you alcohol, show you crappy reprints of ancient-looking scenes, and somehow get you drunk enough to buy them. Trust me, it only takes making that mistake once.

So it was with great skepticism that I stopped to talk to someone in the Subway station by my house when he asked if I had a moment. I’m not sure if this will go down as a momentous occasion, or the beginnings of another great scam, but there is only one way to find out. Turns out, there was a team recruiting Westerners to be represented by their modeling company. Yes, perhaps it is the rebirth of a nascent career cut short by the ravages of puberty. Regardless, I’m pretty sure the only requirement is that you be white, and somewhat young, but of course, I was intrigued.

I met up with them in their offices in the “YuCheng Mansion.” Chinese people have an odd way of calling 30 story buildings “mansions.” I have stopped questioning it. Our first meeting consisted of the man speaking virtually no English, so there was a lot of miming and hand motions. I think he got really excited when I told him that I played the piano. I’m not sure if I should be concerned about what kind of modeling/acting jobs he would be able to get me with my piano skills, but at this point I have just starting accepting that its all quite odd. I did check no to the magic abilities and Kung Fu boxes, however.

Then he took my measurements, and took 3 digital pictures of me, and told me that his boss wasn’t there right now, and that I needed to come back tomorrow. Sort of annoying, but again, nothing is as you may expect it at this point. However, I was thinking that perhaps the industry in China was just “undeveloped” enough, that these 3 pictures would suffice, and I wouldn’t need any sort of professional picture to get jobs. This is not the case. The next day, a Russian lady, and the same man were there to meet me. The Russian lady was the interpreter turns out, which apparently lends more credibility and trust to the whole operation, because she is perceived as being neutral. In short, they convinced me to immediately go to some photography studio and get a portfolio done, because they were SO confident that I will be able to land acting jobs. Because A) Chinese people LOVE foreigners. Sort of true, though I think they are more entranced by the foreign lifestyle. And B) I have a “special” smile. I hope by special they don’t mean, “he rides the short bus.”

The photography studio was also sort of a trip in itself. I got my “portfolio” done in an hour, including hair and makeup. Chinese efficiency is again at work. The wardrobe choices were totally bizarre, and I had to draw the line somewhere before the green t-shirt coupled with the leather vest with fringes and a top hat. No kidding. So that is pretty much where I stand. I took some pictures, apparently am being represented, and am now just waiting for that big break. All in the span of about 24 hours.

At this rate, my fifteen minutes of fame are probably going to feel more like fifteen seconds. If this isn’t the start of some elaborate scam. We shall see.

Shame

In a country where “keeping face,” aka, maintaining your status, and not looking bad in front of your peers is crucial, I guess it makes sense that ’shaming’ a student would work as a behavior control technique. However, the process of shaming a student that you cannot really rough up (as tempting as it is sometimes), much less communicate with effectively using words, becomes much more complicated. The Chinese teachers have the edge here. There is no hesitation in berating a first grader for a few minutes in the middle of class to stop the unwanted behavior. Top offenses include:

1) Incessant touching of desk mate. Some kids just cannot keep their hands off of each other. Sure, it’s cute, it’s puppy love, but it’s clear they are not paying attention to my melodic rendition of 3 Little Monkeys, and its pissing me off.

2) Stealing the “Hello Kitty” pencil pouch of the girl behind you, or the “Toy Story 2″ rocket ship pencil box of the boy in front. It never gets old, trust me.

3) When repeating as a class, there is always the one kid who has to say it first, throwing off the whole synch of things. I realize that when the most stressful part of your day is having to glare really menacingly at the kid who says ‘B’ right when you say it, instead of immediately after like everyone else, really your job/life isn’t all that tough. But I can’t even begin to explain how I want to rip their vocal cords out.

Today, I figured it out though. The kids here go absolutely insane for a sticker (preferably a red, for communism, star) as a reward. I’m pretty sure I could get them fluent in French too, if I had enough stickers. So when I first started giving them out I was a little bit confused, because instead of holding out their hands for them, they look straight up at you like a lost puppy might. I learned eventually that this was the cue to put them right on the middle of their forehead. The more stickers they get in a day, the cooler they are. Status clearly isn’t lost on them.

So today after my little star student got his sticker, I suppose he realized that odds were he wouldn’t get another one, and he could just goof off the rest of the day. I went over to his desk, tapped him on the shoulder, and made sure everyone saw me rip the sticker right off his head.

Making children cry isn’t always my goal. I just consider it a perk of the job.

Communism is so not Cool Sometimes

Usually the fact that China is communist really doesn’t affect my day to day life. Even a lot of Chinese people seem to agree that it is just more efficient to have the government decide things for the 1.3 billion, than to try to have political factions battling things out, accomplishing nothing. In light of the current situation in Congress, it doesn’t really seem so crazy sometimes.
However, the communist party leadership seems to be very worried about the younger generation using the internet to start any kind of uprising or revolution. Hence where it starts to affect my life. Many social networking, aka blogs and picture sharing sites, are generally blocked, as are sites such as Wikipedia, which contain information that the government doesn’t want getting out (such as what actually happened in Tianenmen square in ‘89). On a side note, according to my host parents, the students violently attacked the soldiers, resulting in the deaths of 9 soldiers. This is of course contrary to well, history. And I’m pretty sure I’ve seen video of it to the contrary. I found out later that my host dad was the leader of a “young communist political group” in his local province, which I guess why he still totes the official party line, even today. Still, I think that many people today in China really do believe that the government did nothing wrong, and the party will take whatever shred of credibility it can take whenever it can get it.
So I woke up today to find that Youtube, in all its glory, has now been officially blocked. That was pretty much the last link to American Pop Culture, the good and the bad, I had left. They may as well ban the internet outright, and just get it over with.

Anyways, having a state controlled media as well makes for some fun propaganda. And I hope its propagand, because if it’s true, it would just be sad. Take this article for example:

北京提升猪肉产品质量 生猪入圈静养听音乐
To improve pork quality, Beijing pigs will listen to soothing music

Said a spokesperson of one of the 10 Olympic pig farms (whose locations are a top secret):
“生猪入圈后进行24小时静养，听着舒缓的音乐淋浴、饮水，目的是减少应激反应，避免猪肉中出现不良物质。”
The pigs are kept under 24-hour care. They wlll listen to soothing music while being bathed or drinking their water. This is to reduce their stress reactions and to avoid bad substances from appearing in the pork.

I think this is a winning idea really. Global Warming? No potable drinking water in 10 years? No biggie. Our pigs are going to be damn tasty.