Mees Love ees learning.

So....I've been a Foreign English Teacher in China for 2 1/2 weeks now. 

YUH, it's flown by for me, too. 

Yes, I love what I do. I don't love every lesson, I don't love every class period, but I do love teaching and I LOVE being called "Mees Love". 

I love seeing excited (if a little bit naughty) faces every time I come into class. I love hugs in the hallway and "HALLO MEES LOVE HOW AH YOU?" when my students walk by and children who excitedly show me to their parents when they are getting picked up on the weekend.

Picked up on the weekend? What? 

Oh yes, that. Well, you see, this school is different than your typical American school. Here are 10 key differences. 

(1)

It's a boarding school. This means that sometimes you'll run across a kindergartner (yes, KINDERGARTNER) on the playground wailing "MAMAMAMAMAMAMA....." It also means that this place is flooded with parents' cars on the weekends when they come to pick their kids up. Watching them come is what we like to call "Saturday morning cartoons". 

(2)

Because it's a boarding school, they've got some night classes. Yeah, you heard me. NIGHT classes.

(3)

Recitation is the thing. Recitation, mind you, is not a bad thing, especially in a collectivist culture. It just makes planning a lot different. Discussions, worksheets, creative writing, making up skits....that's all out the door. My lessons are full of activities that allow the kids to repeat every. little. thing. I. say. That can make things a little tricky. 

"My name is Miss Love." 

"MA NAME IS MEES LOVE."

*facepalm*

(4)

Classroom management looks different, too. Gone are the days of "Move your color" and individual behavior plans. Up until yesterday I was trying to use the same forms of management I would use in the states, which worked for the first week while the kids were still in shock over my American beauty. But now that the shock's worn off, they've found that I'm not like their other teachers and I won't verbally assault them when they do wrong (and even if I did, they wouldn't understand me!) SO. After much frustration, I've taken up the tactic of some of my Chinese co-teachers: TEAMS. Split the class into teams on the blackboard, put magnets under each team when you see them acting like they're saints, and SHABAM, they all turn into straight-spined, bug-eyed, cross-armed little Asian mice. It's like magic. Collectivism at its finest. 

(5)

They know the ABC song. It's different from our ABC song. Trying to teach them ours is, therefore, useless. 

(6)

The bathroom is a trench with three "cells" that don't have doors. How do you use this? You squat over the trench and hope a first grader doesn't walk in. Also, the trench gets flushed all at once and may be sitting for a while between flushing...so try to walk the route to classes that doesn't go by the bathroom unless you really feel like being inundated with pee smell. 

(7)

Recess consists of structured marching, dancing, and jump roping. And when you march (or walk anywhere), you have to yell, "EE, AR, EE!" ("ONE, TWO, ONE!") You also have to follow the direction of the class monitor--one of your classmates who just happens to be responsible enough to have the privilege of carrying around a whistle and yelling at you. 

(8)

Students get ten minute breaks between classes, and while there are hallway "rules", they spend most of the break yelling, running around, smacking into each other, sliding down the tiled floor, wrestling, yelling some more, and grabbing hold of the foreign teacher as she walks by. 

(9)

At the beginning of class, music plays over the intercom and a voice says, "Mates, class weel begin! Ples pree-pare!" At the end it says, "Schoolmates, we are pleased to have a ten-minute break. *blablasomethingIcanneverremember* Ples remember the hallway jrules!" On the way to lunch, we always hear these three songs over the intercom: Did You Ever See a Lassie?, How do you do, Mary Margaret?, and Our School Will Shine. Yes, I do sing along with them all the way to lunch. Yes, they are sung in a fantastic Chinglish accent. 

(10)

30% of the time, the electronics in the classroom will not work. Ples, pree-pare for this. 

Those are only a few differences. 

It's all been quite a learning experience--almost as if four years of learning how to be a teacher still didn't really prepare me for this. 

But that's ok. 

Mees Love weel learn.