Sentence of the Week
This morning, I was asked to say the sentence of the week at the school assembly. Every Monday morning, school begins with all 2,000 children marching to the field at the main campus for a few words from the principal or from some other school dignitary and then the raising of the Chinese flag along with the national anthem. Afterwards, one of the foreign teachers gets up in front of the assembly and “teaches” the students one simple English sentence as the sentence of the week. The foreign teacher’s co-teacher then explains the sentence in Chinese and the foreign teacher repeats each word a couple of times into the microphone and hears a see of almost-perfect pronunciation floating back in response.
I chose to say and teach the following sentence, “I like to sleep after lunch.” Accidentally, not really knowing how this thing was supposed to happen, I asked the students to repeat the whole sentence before I had taught it to them. It came back to me as, “I rai chu sree paft runaa chir rah”. And most of the last part sounded more like, “runaa…chirrrahhhh…nnnah?” Oopsies. So, I said each word and waited for the response. It was very enthusiastic though the faces looked up to me wondering what the heck they were being asked to say. My co-teacher, Season, grabbed the mic and told the students what they had just said. Maybe two out of the 2,000 surreptitiously laughed and then my students all whispered very loudly, “Heeeelllllooooo Lllliiiiiiiiiilllllliiiiisssss….” It was cute and awkward all at once. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I tried to work the crowd into a frenzy but I was cut short by the assembly orchestrator who wanted me off the stage immediately. I handed the mic back to Season and was going to step down when the orchestrator whispered harshly to Season and myself, “THANK YOU” – so I said “Thank you” into the mic and the orchestrator shook her head furiously and then Season said “Thank you” in Chinese into the mic and that really got the orchestrator mad. Finally, someone shouted out to the students, “Say thank you” in Chinese and the students all said “Thank you” and I said “Your welcome” but by this time, a 6th grader had the mic and was telling the students they could walk back to class.
During my 2nd period classes, as warm up, I asked who could remember the sentence of the week. They didn’t even know what sentence of the week meant. So, I asked if they remembered seeing me on the field at the assembly earlier in the morning. Then, one girl stood up and told me the sentence in Chinese. Two others knew the words “like” and “lunch” and it was agony filling in the rest of the blanks. I hate to be negative, but I see this as a metaphor for Chinese education in general. Good in theory but all wrong in execution. Granted, they heard the sentence once or twice, but it seems it is more important to the education authorities that the students repeat this exercise each week, but no one seems to care if the children actually get anything out of it. I was even more disappointed during my foster class today – I’m teaching one 4th grade class every day this week until the last foreign teachers arrive this weekend – when I asked if anyone knew what the sentence of the week was and they didn’t know what sentence of the week meant either and not one remembered it in Chinese even. Actually, the 4th grade class was very difficult today. They know a lot more English but they were almost upset when I couldn’t remember their names after one introduction (I guess I’d be annoyed too) and they tested me a lot just like my 5th and 6th grade day camp children did during the summer of 2001.
Today was long, but I feel like I’m getting the hang of lesson planning and ad-libbing, which is required almost all of the time because each class has a different need and based on the time of the day when I catch the children, their moods range from acutely aware to hyper and NOT listening to lethargically about to fall asleep. But I really love this and I really enjoy the thrill of seeing the children’s faces light up when they GET what I’ve just taught them. I feel like I’m getting pretty good and changing up the way in which I ask them to explain what they’ve learned and we always have fun when I try and trick them and they figure it out. I could go on and on, but I think these victories are small and will happen daily. So, I’ll revel in the fact that they continue to occur.
I’ll end on this note though, there’s nothing more exhilarating than explaining what function AFTER performs in a sentence and asking what other words act similarly and having more than one child say, “It’s like a PREPOSITION!” These children are still mastering CHINESE for goodness sakes! Oh to be a child again with that rubbery retention-happy brain of theirs!
