The Observation

It is week 13 here at Qiannan Normal University and I have been teaching since Week 5. The Freshmen have something called Freshman training in the first four weeks of their university career and although I don’t know what this training entails exactly (reminding them to do the bloody work I imagine) it meant that my services were not required for the early weeks of the semester. This was just as well, I might add, for anyone who has followed my adventures will know that I arrived in China a day short of a month late due to good old beaurocratic Visa applications. So half way through this week, my ninth week of teaching, my usual schedule of talking slowly and performing a combination of taboo, Pictionary and my stand-up comedy routine to convey meaning was interrupted by an official observation from most of the English teachers in the Foreign Languages department. My boss Stone and his office-mate Li were there along with the Dean, Darren and his boss Young Sir. Rounding up the total of these four to an even fifteen were the rest of my co-workers. Gulp.

I haven’t been particularly diligent with this blog, not wanting to fill it too quickly and not wanting to write any stories that didn’t yet have a meaningful ending but I have been typing away behind the scenes so I’ll fill you in on the necessary details. My education in teaching was an online TEFL course taken in the week following the submission of my final piece of university course work. This was supposed to be supplemented with two weeks’ worth of intensive training in Beijing with lectures, survival Mandarin lessons and, most importantly in-class teaching experience. I came to China with none of this. Before the flight I wasn’t really worried at all about coming here because of the being-away-from-home side of things. I knew Callum would be here and I had spoken to Darren on Skype who had put my mind at ease about how nice the faculty would be. I had spent three and a half weeks in Japan the previous Summer which had been easier than taking a trip to Glasgow (partially because we had our friend Aaron there to navigate for us, but also because I am a big boy now.) No, what really worried me was the thought of standing in that room on the first day, saying something and receiving nothing back but blank stares.

What would I do if I couldn’t engage the students or if they simply couldn’t understand a word I said? I was equally terrified by both extremes. On the one hand, memories of my stint in a high school when I sat in on a maths class who barely listened to a word the teacher said for 40 minutes abides with me. Pure anarchy reigned and the teacher barely made herself heard over the racket. It was a horror show. On the other hand, I worried about standing in front of a class which refused to move, or speak, or do anything I asked of them. A class who just staring at me. Until the end of time. I had been in one of these towards the end of my time in university and shamefully it was me doing the staring. What if they saw beneath my thin veneer of authority? What if I, Stephen the Emperor revealed my lack of clothing and I was a laughing case? What if they threw things at me or spat at me and called me foreigner? What? It could happen, you don’t know.

In a way I was right to be worried because my first class was abominable. I wanted to ease them in, let them get to know me and see a few pictures of Scotland. I wanted to play a little music (hey, it’s a listening class) and have a little conversation. Everything went wrong, the technology didn't cooperate, I forgot things that I was meant to say and apparently I was teaching a class full of girls carved from stone. If I asked one a question she would giggle and refuse to say anything. I had set up conversation activities. They were supposed to talk to each other in English and ask a few questions to each other but they didn’t! They wrote out their answers on paper instead. I set aside time for them to ask me questions, to share our culture, but I got nothing! It was horrifying.

So, we’ll skip ahead to week 13. On Monday night I received two texts from Li (lovely woman, made Aimee porridge in hospital and helped us with our phone cards.) The first read;

… BTW, we are going to have the class observation at your tomorrow’s class (16:50 – 17:00). Please be ready for that~

I gazed at this, briefly taking a moment to pick my stomach off the floor. I read the second text.

If u need to ask anything or check sth (an abbreviation for “something that I’ve never seen in the West but regularly see in China) for this, feel free to ask me in case there’d some cultural confusion about what we do here.

I had known for a while that these inspections might be coming. For a while Callum and I thought, because of words heard through the grapevine, that our performances were not reaching a satisfactory level. Some well-placed words from the loyal foreign teachers appeared to have assuaged these suspicions about me but we all thought that Callum was going to be observed at some point last week. He hadn't been. I believed I was in the clear so it was a shock to see that I would be the first to receive a visit from our employers.

I told Li that I hoped I wasn’t in trouble and asked whether I needed to prepare anything. She said it was quite standard and that I should fill in a lesson plan form. I had never seen one of these before and so she sent me the outline via WeChat (it’s a standard experience in China to only be informed of something just before you absolutely need to know it.) 

Despite now knowing exactly what I needed to do I was still wracked with nerves during that evening and in the day leading up to my class. I stopped by Li's office two hours early to pick up a physical copy of the form. How many people will be there? I asked tentatively. Oh, Stone and… I don’t know their English names. Four or five people. Whoever isn’t teaching. The stomach took a dive again. It feels like I’ve been thrown a curve ball in this job, every time I start to feel comfortable.

Well, there we had it, my class was going to be watched by about 5 people including Darren who is probably the most intimidating of my superiors. All I could do was carefully inscribe the words of my lesson plan that I had typed up the night before onto the new sheet of paper and wrestle with my nerves, tweaking the PowerPoint I had so lazily thrown together over the weekend.

As I approached my classroom I saw a number of teachers outside my door. Inside there were more. Much more. It seemed like every English teacher in the University had come along for the show. Class 3 has 49 students in it and they normally fill up a room, add to their number 16 odd teachers and my class was beginning to look like the 18 local bus during rush hour, bursting at the window-panes.

Stephen! Daria came up to me and whispered. Daria is one of my star students and an extremely good English speaker. Are you OK? There are so many teachers!

I nodded, knowingly, worried and I scanned my desk. The classrooms regularly lack working whiteboard pens, chalk, dusters and other useful amenities whose absence you don’t notice until you desperately need a piece of chalk, a whiteboard pen or a duster. Everything had to go right.

Pens, can you get me some pens for the whiteboard please? I muttered desperately, eyes popping madly no doubt. I need pens!

OK, I get for you! Aimee is working over there! Good old Daria said as he sprinted, full pelt away down a corridor. You can always count on Daria. He runs practically every English club in the place, is the monitor for his class, has many meetings in a week and still finds time to eat in the evening.

As I sat down in my teacher’s chair to set up the PowerPoint and CD I met the eyes of some girls in the class. They shared my panic wordlessly. I think, upon reflection that I was very lucky that Class 3 was being inspected, for out of all my classes, I know them best of all. I teach them twice a week, they have a good sense of humour and I can relax in front of them. They are the class most likely to call out greetings in the corridor. They were worried for me, I was worried for me and we all knew it. I began my weekly ritual of wrestling with the sound system and I panicked, sure that the entire lesson would be ruined because of a technology snaphoo. My deep soothing breaths must have been loud because Li was kind enough to walk past and whisper, It’s OK Stephen you still have 2 minutes. I did. And boy, were they over in the blink of an eye.

The bell went. I began my lesson ritualistically by standing up, going to the door, checking outside for any stray students, closing the door and saying Good afternoon class.

Good afternoon they replied in unison.

Good afternoon teachers. I said and there was a far less enthusiastic scattered murmur in response.

I think the students are winning. I joked awkwardly, to a deafening wall of silence. With that my lesson began.

It wasn’t an especially exciting lesson. I played the CD, I explained the activities, I checked answers and I showed my slide show. As I taught I tried to focus on the students but my eyes kept drifting over to powerful members of the faculty who looked, to me, to be incredibly bored. If I'm boring them, I must be boring the students too. I do a weekly activity using pictures to show vocabulary words. As I did it though, a couple of the students looked a little amused. The words are too easy, this is a waste of time. I’m wasting the teachers’ time, I’m wasting the students’ time, I’m taking this all too slowly.

We were reading maps in that lesson and listening to directions so I had prepared a prop to help demonstrate left and right turns on a projection of a map from the textbook. It was just a pencil which pointed in the direction of “forward” and had its left and right sides marked on paper stuck to its sides with L and R. The pencil would follow the route on the board as I described the directions. It’s silly but it’s fun and it gives the students something to look at while they listen. I’m all about audio visual teaching. I like to draw on the board and write down tough words and act out unfamiliar phrases. The pen was the one thing I was sure would reflect well upon my teaching.

The bell for break rang and I was relieved to see the teachers standing up. I guessed that they were leaving which was great, I wouldn’t have to be on my best behaviour in the second half of the lesson. I could joke with the students and let loose with my drawings and charades! We could have some fun. One of the teachers – I don’t actually know his name but I think that we have been to a banquet together – invited me to join him downstairs. We, with a couple of others went down to the Dean’s office. I was going to have a group feedback session attended by all of the teachers, Darren and his superior included, but I had to wait for everyone to join us. I was sure I had done something wrong, the lesson had been too dry, I wasn’t giving enough homework and these thoughts clashed about in my head as the other teachers trickled in.

We sat in a circle, everyone gave their feedback and it was good! I won’t bore you with the words of a score of people but I will summarise them. A number of the teachers said how great it was to have someone with such a clear British accent. They loved my accent. I was very patient and so well prepared. They liked my direction pencil. A number of them said that they had been inspired by my game of showing pictures and asking the students to identify the vocabulary words that they saw. Apparently listening teachers just write on a board most of the time but they thought my way was much better. It wasn’t all positive but the constructive feedback was very helpful. Stone thought that I covered too much and should expand upon each activity. Li thought I should introduce the class to key phrases to listen out for before jumping into listening for them. Darren thought I was really professional but that I should invent more activities that weren’t from the book. He also mentioned that while I had been waiting for him he had been talking to my students and that they could not only understand me but really liked me. His superior, Young Sir gave some of the best feedback of all. He said he was grateful to have sat in on such an excellent class. That I not only introduced the listening clearly but that I gave the class a good chance to understand it during the listening and followed it up with a lot of explanation that would give them the time to digest the answers. In spite of this though, and here’s the kicker, I should have more fun with them. Teachers and students can be friends and the students would benefit from a less official, relaxed atmosphere. Crumbs.

Overall, I couldn’t have hoped for better feedback, not bad for a teacher with a week’s online training. They even mentioned that they hoped to extend my contract and that I could sit in on one of Callum, Aimeéée or Sam’s classes next time. The power… the power is going to my head.

I was thrilled when I got back to class. I skipped forward in the book to a fill-in-the-blanks activity that allowed me to act, draw, joke and have fun to my heart’s content. The students showed that they like me too, because I had dinner with Daria the other boy in the class Ares. I went to the students’ cafeteria, one that is outside and next to a scenic pool. We spoke about the French language, Marvel movies (in China they call Captain America, Kiwi Boss) and they told me who had a crush on a girl in the class. I had Chow Mein. And it was good.