teaching english

Today we headed 1 hr to the Jinshan area to help teach english at
Mengshan Xuezuheng migrant school*. Our buddy works with several
migrant schools helping them with resources, arranging volunteer
groups from international schools, and 1-day trips to help them keep
their studies consistent

None of us had any teaching experience - yikes! Fortunately the
curriculum had already been made for us- it was about holidays,
specifically: Easter, Halloween, and Dragon boat festival. Our group
had the less experienced english learners- so much of the lessons had
to be translated into Chinese. It was hard to talk slow and enunciate.
Since I was useless for translating, I wrote all the words on the
board. We taught them the question words- and they stared at us
blankly, until it was translated. The other to classes the kids
probably knew more english than I Mandarin...

We had two boys in our class- one was huge and one was tiny. And the
tiny one was really shy. I asked him what his name was, and he
nervously smiled as he curled up in a ball hiding his face and turning
red! It was really cute. I wonder if I was ever like that?

Repeated they asked me about the words, "recieve", "activities", and
how to say "Halloween".

Halloween. Hall-wee? Ha-low-WEEN. Ha-low-wee. Ok. Good enough.

I didn't even know how to explain the the "c" in "recieve" sounds like
"s". They kept reading it, "Ruh-KEEv"

It was a long day, but we enjoyed the kids. The two girls you see
sitting in front of me were the class clowns- They were drawing these
bucktoothed silly drawings of each other and the "It wasn't me it was
HER" gestures. The two girls you see in Timon's photo were pretty
smart and were asking how old I was and stuff.

*Migrant schools are public schools for the children of migrant
workers. They can't go to the Shanghai public schools without a hukou-
or proof of residency for Shanghai. Previously private schools had
popped up to service the children without a hukou, but they weren't
regulated and sometimes of low quality. ANyhow, the school we worked
with today was fairly decent, one room had a TV mounted in the corner,
and the rooms were packed with two person desk and small wooden
chairs. It was a k-8 school with 800 kids- but on Saturday, about 40
signed up for our session, focusing on middle schoolers. All but 5
were giggling girls. Most of them came from Sichuan and Anhui province.