Tuesday, April 15, 2008

It helps to have a good night sleep…which I did. Although I left the window open and the temperature seemed to be close to the 80 degree range yesterday, it cooled off and the street noise was not bad. It did not bother my sleep at all. I had breakfast in the hotel at 7:00 AM … interestingly, with several other Chinese soldiers dressed in full uniform. A driver from the school picked me up at 7:50 AM. It turned out that the middle school was only a five minute ride down the same road as the hotel. The principal arranged for me to visit three morning classes…English 7, math 7, and physical education. There are 1,400 students and 130 teachers at the Jinan Middle School # 12. All students take four classes in the morning, go home for a two-hour break/lunch, and then return for four more classes. The staff does the same. There were forty-four students, all in their blue and white sweat-suit uniforms, in the class when I arrived. The teacher, my interpreter Ms. Hou, had them all stand when I entered the room and said in unison “Good morning Principal Dellinger. Welcome to China and the Jinan Middle School #12.” I sat at the back of the room with another English teacher, who was also observing Ms. Hou as a colleague, and the principal Mr. Zhang. It was an amazing class to observe…one of the best “world language” classes that I have ever seen. Ms. Hou had brought her class to one of the few rooms in the school that had a LCD projection device mounted in the ceiling. She used a masterful combination of PowerPoint slides and pictures of famous people to teach students vocabulary about how to describe people. Students in rote, repeated a host of new vocabulary words to describe a person’s height (tall, short, or medium build), to describe their hair (black, brown, blonde, short, curly, long, etc.) as well as other features. Students at times spoke to each other in pairs and sometimes turned around to discuss things in a group of four. At other times they would be called on, one after another to practice an English word or phrase, and always stood up when called upon. Rigor, time-on-task, active student involvement, and the teacher-prepared PowerPoint were all outstanding. And of course, there were absolutely no discipline problems with so many adults in the room…but I don’t think it actually is any different on other days. The students were motivated and worked hard the entire forty-five minute period. For homework, they were assigned a writing assignment to describe a certain person. I’m betting most will have done it extremely well…even though they come from a rather poor section of the city and teachers told me only thirty-percent of the families have computers in their homes. The next class was a math class…and again, another superior teaching performance. (I’m quite sure the principal was showing me his best staff.) This teacher again used a self-made PowerPoint presentation to show students how the three angles of a triangle always add up to 180 degrees. At times students came up to her computer to manipulate a protractor to measure the angles. All students also used protractors at their desks. At one point students made triangles of various sizes, cut off the angles, and lined them up in a straight line to show visually how the sum of any triangle always totals180 degrees. Students also worked for brief periods of time in groups of two, or turned around to form groups of four. When the teacher wanted the group work to end, she clapped her hands twice, and students stopped and listened. It was another masterful performance I could also tell that there was great affection and respect between the teacher and the students. Finally, the students were dismissed with homework exercises from their soft-covered textbook. It was actually unusual that the students left this classroom. Most students stay in the same room all morning and all afternoon in China’s schools. It is the teacher who rotates from room to room. Classrooms are very standard and usually bare of any one teacher’s decorations. Hardly anything were on the walls in this school. And teachers only usually teach two (sometimes three) classes a day. However class size is another matter. In this school it ranges from a low of 44 to a high of 55 students. When not teaching, teachers work together in rather large offices, correcting student’s papers, preparing lessons, discussing students, or observing other teachers…a common practice. Finally, I went outside to observe physical education classes. Three PE teachers each had about fifty students at various locations on the large field that was covered with indoor/outdoor carpet. The field could be used for soccer, but it also had three basketball courts painted across the soccer field. There was also an all-weather track around the field. All groups did warm-up drills and calisthenics. One group of the seventh graders then practiced long jumping and then did relay races. One group of eighth graders did basketball drills. The ninth graders did volleyball drills. The students were extremely orderly…and seemed to enjoy the classes, especially drills that involved competitive races. The school does not have any indoor facilities for gym. Everything is outdoors. Today, the weather this morning was sunny and spring-like with temperatures in the 70’s, perfect for PE.

I returned to the hotel for lunch, and for the first time had some trouble getting down two of the “special” plates ordered. Most of the Chinese food I found tasted very good. Today’s food was the exception. I went to my room for a break and checked email and worked on my blog. Then, upon returning to school, I met with all the English teachers and shared the PowerPoint presentation that I had made of the Amity Middle School in Bethany. I also was able to connect to the school’s website, and shared many of the resources on it…including student work. This is one area that we were clearly ahead of the Chinese schools. There are not many computers in schools available for teacher’s use. Usually, one computer is available for four or five teachers in the building. Also, most families, about sixty-percent in this school, do not have computers at home. Teacher’s websites therefore are not practical to use. The school does have two or three computer labs that teachers share. Laptops and COWS (Computer on Wheels) were not available. I learned a lot about the school by having the meeting with the English teachers. I hope they found my presentation interesting. Before leaving school I observed a meeting with the principal and vice-principal and twelve “head” ninth grade teachers. A “head” teacher is in charge of a group of four or five other teachers, something similar to our “team leaders.” The administration was getting ready to have students take a practice, end-of-year examination. The end-of-year examinations are very important since their scores will determine which high school they will attend. The better their score, the better high school they could attend. The competition for high school and university is very, very competitive.

I had dinner that evening at a local restaurant with the vice principal, a teacher, and a friend of theirs who ran his own business importing waste paper and waste plastic. Then, I went back to the hotel to meet my “old” friend Mr. Han. Mr. Han was an exchange teacher back in the fall and he had stayed with me and my family and visited both the Amity Middle School as well as the high school. He had no idea that I was accepted to participate on the spring exchange program, and my email to him about my coming was returned. I luckily got his phone number from another Chinese educator on Monday and had my school’s principal call him earlier today. He was especially glad to learn that “I was in town” and brought his wife to meet me in the hotel. We exchanged gifts, shared recent photographs of our families, and made arrangements to go out to dinner tomorrow evening. What a small world we live in!