Recentness

It's been ridiculously long since my last blog post. I'll just summarize what's been going on.

First of all, teaching has been extra challenging this semester. Last semester was certainly difficult, but I felt like I was simply getting used to things and getting comfortable with the idea that I am teaching. this semester I alsways want things to go pretty well and it's a little more upsetting when they don't. That being said I've had some of my better students give me complements recently on my class, and we've been told that us foreign teachers get a much higher level of attention and interest than their professors.

Here's the rundown of how it's going.

First of all, I've been lazy about the sophomore class. Father Jim Teaches the other 6 sections of the Bible class and I've been following his lead on what we do in class. While he commands a great deal of respect as an older, well-educated, chinese speaking foreign teacher. I really can't get away with his lecture heavy teaching style as a young foreigner. The students are totally uninterested in reading the text of the Bible (though they're remarkably good at understanding it). So I'm going to shift the class toward more oral English and include certain bible stories as for reading and discussion

I'll give a bit more context before I get to my junior lit. class, I may have discussed much of this already but it bears repeating. A Chinese University (outside of top universities) is a bit more like High School in the U.S. Students do not choose their classes--many do not choose their major. They have around 10 courses per semester. There are lots of mandatory meetings and even mandatory study halls. In terms of their lives as well it's their first taste of freedom. Up until college, the students would go to school until 6 p.m. or later.

Also students pass college. It's very difficult in China not to. If you fail, you retake the exam. If a student gets into college, they generally get out with a degree. (Though one of my students managed to leave, after not attending class for 3 semesters.) As a side note, last semester my grades were taken and made into ten 90s, ten 70s and about one hundred and sixty 80s.

In my Junior class the story has been interesting. Having ceased to take attendance all of the time, I've kind of let some of the completely uninterested and ready to nap ones stay home more often. Of the ones who do still come, it feels like a much better proportion of the class is interested and it has a positive effect on the energy of the class. There are still a good number of students who do homework in the back but I tend to let them and teach the interested ones. I don't know that this is the correct course of action but I don't want to fight college students. The classes seem to go pretty well that way, and the students who stay with me seem to be more into it.

Anyway that's what's been going on now. I've been thinking mostly about my Job, as well as about the end of the year which is coming surprisingly fast!