On the Eve of Children's Day
Today was interesting. Class at De Xing Primary went fine. For my 6th grade classes I was teaching musical instruments, so i brought in my Les Paul guitar and erhu. As expected, I got stares and "whaaas" as I rode my bike to school, and I got many when I walked into my classes. Its sooo amazing!
During the classes I took them out n stuff. I asked the students if any of them knew how to play guitar, erhu, or any of the other instruments in the book. Of course, no hands were raised as the kids looked around nervously to see if anyone else was raising their hand. It was a class of 50 chinese kids... At least one had to have known how to play piano! If you are chinese, its like you are required to learn either piano or violin....or ping pong. I asked if any of them knew how to play the erhu and no one pipped up. I was ashamed of them. They are disrespecting their own culture. :D
They all cheered whenever I was able to seduce a kid up to play the guitar.
Well, those classes were good.
Kindergarten sucked royally. I am still trying to work with these 2-4 year olds the body parts. Its been the same lesson pretty much. I am just trying different things and games to get them to learn the words. I tried to do a super simple game with them today, each kid would shout out a body part different from the kid sitting next to him or her, if it was the same, they stand up. Very simple. My directions were short and clear. The initial start of the game, it went fine, about 10 kids did it properly and then one kid said the same thing. The chinese teachers went nuts. They re-explained the directions to them. And it seemed to take about 10 minutes to explain the game to the children in Putonghua and Guangdonghua. And after that, the kids were speechless. And I got frustrated because I know these kids could do it. Wing said it was too hard for them. I was like, "Duh, when you take like 20 minutes to explain a simple game to them in both Putonghua and Guangdonghua, I would expect them to get lost. I would." And of course, the chinese lady that overseas is constantly being a hardcore enforcer. She has been really pissing me off lately because she keeps on singleling out and punishing this little girl, Yang Shen-Yu (i think) and having her sit alone. Today she drew a circle with chalk on the floor in the front of the class and put a chair in it and sat the girl there. I got fed up with this and I was like, "Wing, WTF? The teacher keeps punishing this little girl and I never see her do anything really bad." I said other things along this topic and the teacher was like, "Shen ma?" to Wing. Wing said something, and the teacher took Yang Shen-Yu back to her regular chair then switch up some of the other kids. (btw, this is the little girl that sometimes has had the tendency to walk out of the bathroom with her pants still around her ankles, she also has 4 pigtails, a little chubby, very cute kid) I mean, the most I have seen her do is talk or sit in her chair backwards during the class. I have seen boys punch girls in the face and not be disciplined by this teacher, I have had to enforce it. And other girls have done things to, but she just picks on this little girl.
If I were a little kid, I would fear this woman like the plague. She is so coarse, mean, and forceful towards the kids. Among all the teachers that deal with these young kids classes though, I think she is one of the nicer ones. ...and she's friggin' clueless to what her shirt says or means. This is the second time I have seen her wear this shirt, I need to start bringing my camera along with me again. She has this faded yellow shirt with this written on it across her boobies, "Yummy 69"
My eyes popped out of my head when I saw this shirt. I turned around and laughed a good laugh. The kids saw me laughing and they started giggling. Wing asked me what I was laughing at and I told her the teacher's shirt. She didn't understand.
But anywho, there are so many pieces of work here its disgusting. Maybe you can imagine.
i went to class with Daisy and the class was hard. She was distracted by the lucious sweet tasting watermelon. I did the best I could given the circumstances. Needless to say, my chinese lessons were pointless and useless. I wasn't there in the head and the material I was given was no good. ...if it was needless to say, why did I say it....think about that....
good nite.