White multistory concrete buildings rose out of the red muddy earth surrounded by a green tundra. This is the school Caitlin, my advisors god-daughter teaches at. It's a middle school located in rural China, about four or five hours north of the the Burmese boarder in the province known as Yunnan. The school itself is about 80% minority (700 kids total.)
It's fantastic here -but not exactly comfortable- but still, it's incredible. It's hot, humid, and dirty. The culture is strong, there's no english, and the food is great. I'm currently staying in a guest room on the roof of a retired teacher from the school.
Caitlin lives in a dorm room on school, maybe 15 x 30 feet, which normally holds about a dozen students. The kids stay at school five days a week and go home on the weekends. If they get days off they make them up with their weekends.
One gem of culture I came across is China's near-nearsightedness, and it's possibly genetic, but honestly we all go blind sooner or later. Mao believed it was from reading and studying all day, so he devised a sytem (which has no medical backing at all,) of eye massages. Every day sometime between 9 and 10am music plays throughout the school and a recording of both instructions and counting plays. All the students rub the top of their eye lids 8 times then move to a different spots. The students are all syncronized to the instruction of the recording, which last for roughly 6 minutes. Then it ends and the students continue their day. Not all the students participate, but many do this.
Caitlin teaches 7th grade english class. It was on the third floor of a worn white concrete building from the 80's. The classroom was pretty much bones of a room: lights, tables, benches, piles of paper on the tables, and a chalkboards... that was it. We went in a few minutes early, there were four students sweeping all of the clutter tossed on the floor from the morning with grass hand-brooms. They filled a large basket then hauled it somewhere out of the room. The class began to fill with the students with two kids on a bench, 3 benches at a table, nine tables, fifty two kids, 20 x 30 foot classroom. The kids stank since they have to pay to take a shower (so therefor did not shower.)
I sat in the front by the door, Caitlin began class:
The students repeated back in unison of what Caitlin said in Mandarin. Caitlin corrected some of them then continued: "He is from New York. He is a student, like you." Some of the students giggled at this thought, so far they assumed I was another teacher, they had never met a white student to my knowledge. Caitlin continued, the class lesson today was commands in english. As the lesson went on for forty-five minutes she would pause occasionally and explain what was happenings. At one point she explained a point rewarding system on the board. The students were awarded points for being good in class, every 500 mark they hit they got to watch a movie, they were nearing 1500. I laughed at this system, as I had a similar one when I was in school. The class erupted in laughter at my strange sounding laugh, it was definitely the highlight of the day.
Later on towards the end of class when they were slightly more comfortable with me I began to sneak photos. Some of them hid, some of them didn't really know what I was doing, and most thought it was just another weird thing the strange white guy does. Some of the students were rather depressing, they weren't trying at all, and there was nothing Caitlin could do about it. The ones that would fall asleep she would make stand up for a few minutes until awake again. There is really no reason for them to learning english, as not even a handful will ever leave this area, let alone have to interact with a foreigner (I was the tiny exception.)
I was refering to English class as ESL, but Caitlin said it's much more like EFL. Mandarin is the kids second langauge, there is a local dialect they all speak which has little cross over with Manderin, and english has nothing in common with either. Every town has their own dialect, and they're all different, even if the towns are just a couple of miles apart. Below is a chart posted above the chalkboard in the classroom. The taller column is the class average on a unit test (a unit is fairly short -not like a semester,) and the short column is the kids that passed. They system is against them, and their textbooks suck.
It's a strange struggle -school in China. Basically after 4th grade if you're not in private school or high end public school, it becomes a joke. Caitlin works for a government middle school in VERY rural China.It's difficult to teach when the government doesn't want smart questioning citizens, or when you have to teach an almost pointless subject. But there are a half dozen students that make it, and escape rural Yunnan, and this is what they need.
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