The English Study Leader

In all middle and high school classrooms in China, there are as many Study Leaders as there are subjects to study. Write the words English Study Leader on the blackboard and ask for that person to identify himself or herself.

Cheng Fei Xiang

Meet Fly, the English Study Leader in Class 14, Grade One. His Chinese name is Cheng Fei Xiang and he conducts himself as English Study Leader with pride.

“Please tell me your duties as English Study Leader”, I said.

“I help all the other students with their English studies,” Fly said.

“What things do you do to help them?” I said.

“When we have English study time, I make sure the other students study well,” he said.

“How do you do that?” I said.

“I help the students write down English words,” he said.

“What else to you do to help the others?” I said.

“I help them say the English words,” Fly said.

Fly’s actions are a living display of a Confucius philosophy; “It is pointless to learn merely for the sake of learning. Application must be the end and learning the means.”

The Chinese believe that it is education, which has been responsible for the ascent of mankind and progress in society.   

Classroom Artwork

Frank at Qidong Middle School

Susan with Penny, another English Study Leader

Susan using fashion as an English topic

You Are Old

The Emporer and his wife

On Friday, October 21, 2005, Frank and I were met by Lemon, the Foreign English Teacher Intern, at the gate of Yichang No. 1 Middle School.

“Why have we been chosen to have our photos taken?” I said.

“You are old and every year the Chinese have a festival for old people. It is part of the Chinese New Year celebration,” Lemon said.

Together we travelled by taxi to the Love Photograph Shop. Our hosts invited us to try on a formal North American wedding gown and tuxedo. We accepted and returned from the dressing rooms in outfits that brought tears to my eyes while reminiscing about our wedding in Canada a year before. Frank laughed at how he looked in his ‘get-up’ as he referred to it. He asked the shop owner if we could wear traditional Chinese wedding garments. The accommodating proprietor instructed his staff to clothe us in outfits fit for an emperor and his wife.

We stood in various poses orchestrated by the photographer. Afterward, the photographs were prepared and refined on a large computer screen. We chose the ones we liked best and left with a computer disk and fond memories of being old in China.

Frank and Susan in Yi

Rule No.6: Enjoy yourself.

The Unbroken Rule

Quidong Foreign Language School

One of the rules issued by our employer in China was not to take on work outside the classroom. For example, they didn’t want their contracted English teachers moonlighting at other training institutions. At the middle school in Qidong where Frank and I were instructing we were approached by several of the parents who asked us to take on their child in private lessons. We explained the company rule to them. They persisted so we agreed to spend time with their child if we could gather at various locations and conduct English Corners.

An English Corner in China is orchestrated by foreign English teachers at libraries, restaurants and permitted public meeting sites. The instruction consists of promoting general conversations on sorted topics. The three ‘T’ topics to be avoided are Tianamen Square, Taiwan and Tibet.

Enjoying a meal at a private setting

The topics we covered with our group of students included western food and how to eat a hamburger with your hands, ♪ music ♪ , the good and bad of zoos, the power of family and the love of friends.

We enjoyed the students’ company immensely. Their rapid conversation and upbeat energy kept us buoyant in a country with a great number of rules. One regulation we learnt from our students was that the ratio of adult to youth or junior youth in public was two young people to one adult. For example, Frank and I supervised six middle school students on our various outings. At a restaurant, which is considered a private setting, we could be with as many as eight students, but if we went to a public place, like a park or a shopping centre, it was necessary for at least one or more of their parents to attend.

Rules aside, we had a tremendous time with our students, inside and outside the classroom. We highly recommend that you take time to be with your students so that you may learn from them.

Beautiful students

Curious about the food

Hello Mr and Mrs Black

Qidong, Jiangsu Province

Rule No. 5: Respect the rules.

Get to Know Your Group Leader

Precious Pear

To paraphrase a quote from Mao Tse Tung, "If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure of a middle school and high school classroom in China, you must take part in teaching English as a second language in China. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience."

Front row group leaders

You will recognize the Group Leader in your middle or high school classroom once all the students are seated. He or she sits in the first desk of each row. The number of Group Leaders you have available to assist you in your classroom depends on the number of rows set up in the room.

The primary duty of the Group Leader is to collect the homework or in-class assignments from each student in his or her row and hand the work to the teacher. The Group Leader is also responsible for distributing hand outs to each student in the row.

Get to know the Group Leaders in your class by asking their names and recording their position on your student roster. Like everyone else in this big world, the students love to hear his or her name. Also, your enthusiastic 'thank you' goes a long way in maintaining the Group Leader's support and cooperation.

Tip No. 4: Get to know your Group Leaders.

Tears of Joy

Train Tickets

All Aboard! We boarded the train from Yichang, Hubei province to Beijing. Our tickets had been purchased for us by our Yichang No.1 Middle School Foreign Teacher Administrator. We were told that our return tickets would have to be purchased in Beijing. We were unaware that Frank had been assigned room number 3 and I was allocated 13. Being separated from my husband so early in our overseas excursion made me uncomfortable so I sat patiently on Frank’s bunk until the conductor found a way to have us travel the 17-hour journey in the same room. 

After we shared conversation with a young Chinese girl and her mother, I fell asleep to the repetitive clacking sound of the train rolling along the tracks.

Soft Sleeper

The next morning, we sipped on tea and ate oranges with our roommates. From the window I admired the view of corn stacked on the top of houses, posted signs in Chinese characters, old buildings, vehicles of various makes and sizes and workers along the train tracks. Some picked up garbage with bare hands while others used large chopsticks. It appeared that everyone was working at something or travelling from some place to somewhere. We passed a graveyard, cornfields and buildings crumbling because of the pollution. Those scenes became very familiar to us in China.

Once in Beijing, we located a room at the Beijing Rainbow Hotel. Our biggest surprise was that there were no mattresses on the beds. In most Chinese motels or hotels, you sleep on a box spring. We chomped on bananas and headed out the door.

Air China tickets

At the train ticket office we were told that there we no return tickets to Yichang for at least two weeks. Our stay was to be for one week and so we were forced to purchase China Air passages to Yichang. From that point we headed to the Forbidden City museum.

Tears of bliss fell down my cheeks as I entered the enormous grounds of the once imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. I was overwhelmed by the majestic detail and that Frank and I had journeyed from Port Hardy, British Columbia to China.

Teaching English as second language was one impressive aspect of our expedition, equal to the discovery of everything Chinese we could absorb.

Imperial Palace Museum ~ Beijing, China

The Chinese Classroom Monitor

Qidong, JiangSu Province

Every middle school and high school classroom in China has at least one Monitor. He or she takes the duty seriously. Their primary duty is to be assistance to the teacher.

Meet Maggie. She was my classroom Monitor at the Qidong Junior Middle School. Qidong is located in JiangSu province. Sweet Maggie was 13 years old. Her daily duty was to observe and report on the overall conduct of the teacher and students in her class. She reported directly to the Head Teacher after each teaching session. She was a quick runner.

Maggie reported on the conduct of the teacher, foreign or otherwise, the behaviour of the students, late arrivals, unfinished homework, homework not handed in, inappropriate language by the teacher or the students and absences. My Monitor was always attentive.

“Maggie, how were you chosen to be Class Monitor?” I said.

“The Head Teacher chose me as Monitor because I have high marks in every subject,” she said.

Maggie's English is a band score of 4 International English Language Testing System. Although she is a limited user and has basic English language competence, she still has enough comprehension to gather your words and actions in the classroom and report your activities to the Head Teacher.

The duty of a Chinese classroom Monitor was described to me by Peng Wen Juan, a Chinese English teacher.

“In my opinion, the job of the monitor in a class is to be a good example and a good guide. He is to lead the class to having a good attitude towards studying, and also to help teachers to have good classes.”

Tip No. 3: Get to know your classroom Monitor.

Drawing by Maggie

China The Same And More

Susan doing domestic.

 A popular saying in India The Same But Different has a sister version in China “The Same And More”. In 2005, we arrived at the Vancouver International airport only to be told that our bags where grossly overweight and deemed totally unacceptable. Poor Frank had to hustle down the airport corridors to buy a third luggage bag. I had provoked the over packing because I thought there wouldn't be any  conveniences in China. What a quality lesson learnt. China has the same as every other country in the world and way more.

We have pollution in Canada and China has more. The sky in Yichang, Hubei Province, where we taught for six months was sometimes green. It smelt like metal and tasted like car exhaust. We have goods in Canada and China has extra. Frank and I walked to the food market regularly and were thrilled with the abundance of fresh vegetables and fruit, live animals ready for slaughter, flopping fish of every variety including eels and frogs. "Anything that walks, swims, crawls or flies with its back to heaven is edible." Cantonese saying.

What we found most intriguing was the lack of wild birds. According to our guide, “They’ve all been eaten. You will only find birds in cages.”

Canada has people and China has more. Our population is approximately 36 million, nearly the population of Beijing. We have lots of vehicles in Canada while China has way extra. You will see that there is not enough room for the cars and so drivers have taken to parking on the sidewalks. Exploring your neighbourhood will be the most fun you’ve likely had in years. We guarantee a busy, noisy, friendly, polluted and crowded adventure.

Tip No. 2: Don’t over pack. China has the same and more.

Sidewalk Scenes

Students Curious About Food

Frank Joins Workers

The Teacher According to Students

Chinese Classroom Heirarchy

According to over 1,000 middle school and high school students in five provinces in China, a teacher, whether Chinese or foreign, should be kind above all else. I conducted a survey in all the schools where I taught and asked the students to express his or her idea of what a best teacher should be. According to the students, the best teacher has the following uncomplicated characteristics:

• Kind
• Beautiful
• Funny
• Pleasant
• Strong
• Wonderful

One of my students wrote, “My best teacher is Long Tang. He’s very friendly and he very likes to forget. Some things we can’t forget but he says forget. If we are a little or a lot sad he says forget. I like him very much. He likes words. I like how the words feel. It’s very nice. He told us a lot of things. He made me happy. He made me don’t cry. He is unique. ~ Yang Yang, Grade 2 Senior Middle School.

Tip No. 1: Learn from your students the characteristics they believe reveal a good teacher.

The Kindness of Strangers

Yichang Architecture

 On December 12, 2005, we needed to send a fax from Yichang, China, to our bank in Port McNeill, British Columbia. The only institutions in the massive city offering the service were luxury hotels.

Frank and I walked eleven kilometres searching for such a lodge. We entered the palace-like front entrance of the Innca Hotel. We took a seat in the lobby and ordered a cup of tea. The gracious hostess set the hot beverage on the table and bowed to us both. Her polite character was a delight. Afterward, we went to the front desk and asked if there was a fax in the building. The clerk blinked at us and pointed with his open hand to a glass walled office. We approached the young lady in the room. Frank asked about sending a fax.

The attractive woman smiled at Frank and spoke to him in an eloquent tone of English.

“We do not have to send a fax here, but I can take you to a business that can arrange it for you,” she said. “Come with me.”

Frank followed her dutifully out of the hotel and down the street. I chose to stay behind and lost track of them until they returned to report that the task was complete.

Her name was Riya. We became fast friends and were privileged by her company for our entire six-month stay in Yichang. She introduced us to huǒ guō, a hot pot feast of meat and vegetables, street noodles, walks along the Yichang River, fine tailors and the kindness of strangers.

Riya introduced us to huǒ guō

Riya introduced us to street noodles

Getting to Know Our Students

Frank plays Red River Valley

 Although the physical size of the classroom was typical in comparison to those in Canada, the number of students in the Chinese middle school and high school classrooms was staggering. The head count on this day was 59.

In parallel classrooms using identical lessons plans, Frank and I introduced ourselves by drawing three large circles on the blackboard. One circle contained the word Family, the other Hobbies and the last circle Future. We each shared personal information with the students and afterward handed out what we referred to as our ‘Bubble Sheets’. Each student filled in his or her own information and the rest of the 45-minute class was used to share information with each other.

Our Bubble Sheet

That year, we learnt that the teacher is the figurehead and is respected by the students. Within a few weeks of spending time with our gracious students, we discovered the communist system alive and well structured in the classrooms. We were very grateful to learn about it from the students themselves and chose to feature it in predominantly in The Little Red Book Teaching ESL in China.

Classroom Hierarchy

Susan's class ~ learning about Manitoba

Yichang 2005

Hubei province courtesy of Travel China Guide

On September 21, 2005, Frank and I touched down at the airport in Yichang, Hubei province and were greeted by our English Foreign Teacher Leader. Her name was Mrs. Long and she was familiar with handling new foreign experts.

Once we arrived at Yichang No. 1 Middle School, she shuffled us into her office and introduced us to her interpreter. We were asked to sit and offered a glass of tea. After a brief orientation of the rules, which included not beating the students, we were given a few days to orient ourselves with our apartment and district.

We walked nearly eleven kilometres that day. Our first stop was only a few metres from our apartment. A pleasant man was mending leather goods and Frank handed him his belt, which needed some repair. Later that morning, we found ourselves at the canal. We stood and watched the sampan captains venture back and forth in the hopes of catching fish.

Frank sketched the vessels and many other unique observations. Four years into our teaching life we used his drawings to enhance each chapter of The Little Red Book Teaching ESL in China.

Exploring Our Neighbourhood

We boarded a ferry and floated over to the the dark river to the man-made peninsula. We explored the markets and brought home some fresh produce..

That evening we filled ourselves with noodles and boiled eggs purchased from one of the many street vendors across from the school. In our apartment, we unpacked our overstuffed suitcases and put our weary heads on sponge-filled pillows. We slept at ease.

Leaving the Apartment; Ferry Ride