Dealing with Distracted Students in My English Class, Guangxi, China

Day 3

This was the third day of our teaching. Most of the volunteer instructors have started to get to know the students in their classes. The students in all the classes are polite,  respectful and eager to learn.

We can get so much more done in our classes as we do not need to spend much time dealing with disciplinary issues. It is a delight to teach these motivated students!

However,  this morning I noticed something was very different. Kirito, the most lively and vocal student in my class, was constantly looking at his cell phone. This was the first time I had a problem in my class.

















After checking his cell phone for a while, he lost interest in our activities and hardly participated at all which was quite uncharacteristic of him. I told him to put away his cell but he still kept at it. He ignored my instructions a couple of times.

This was a classic disciplinary issue facing teachers in many classrooms.


Upset at my students' behaviour,  I  still kept my cool; I was glad I did. Remembering my experience from my teaching days, I needed to find out what was going on with this student, who, a couple of days ago, was full of enthusiasm and motivated to learn in my class.

What caused the change in his behavior?  I needed to find out before I could deal with the student. I went over to his desk and talked to K. in a very gentle and soft voice so other students could not hear me. I asked him what was wrong.

He told me right away that he just found out his grades on his final exams from reading the results on the cell phone. Disappointed about his grades, K. was upset and seemed to have given up learning in class.

At times teachers need to let go of their original lesson plans & modify them

He was not the only student being disappointed by their published academic results, there were a few in my class that had the same experience. Many students were upset and distracted by their results.

Students enjoyed the change of activities

For the rest of the day, my teaching partner and I had to do a lot of encouraging for our class in order to keep them interested.




 Sometimes, when dealing with disciplinary issue, you just have to throw your lesson plan out of the window and modify your plan.

Putting up their crafts work outside the classroom

We did some fun activities instead and taught the students some crafts activities which they certainly enjoyed.

R.T.
Guangxi, China

Day 2 of Our Volunteer Teaching Assignment in Guangxi, China

Day 2

Front entrance to the school where we are teaching for the next 2 weeks

We have a busy daily schedule;  we are teaching in the morning, afternoon and attending team meeting in the evening.



 All the volunteers on our team eat with the students in the summer program at lunch and dinner everyday during our two week teaching assignment at the school.

The outdoor field of the secondary school

Unfortunately, I have a little difficulty stomaching the food as the dishes served are quite spicy to my taste. For those who like spicy food, the food from the school kitchen would be fine.

We salivated at these beautifully decorated cakes

We found 2 bakery shops in the neighbourhood.

Students in China work very hard and they start their school day at around 7:30am and go until 10:00 p.m. Fortunately, this grueling schedule does not apply to the summer program.

Students at the school usually have a break at mid day for lunch and a nap. The good news is we also have a  break for lunch, rest or a nap between 12pm - 3pm when we can relax a little and seek shelter from the heat.

S. and I walked around the neighbourhood and discovered some of the shops.  We found quite a few shops selling the same thing: cell phones while others sell snacks, drinks, stationery and clothing stores. We also found two bakery shops, our favorite.




After dinner with our students, we will have our daily evening team meeting at 8:30pm. The best part of the day is when we can have some quiet time alone in our hotel room to relax. The hotel offers good amenities with air-conditioning and western style toilet; therefore no complaint there. Our favourite evening past time in China is watching TV.  We enjoy the TV shows in our air-conditioned room as we could learn about the news and the latest development in China.

Things are going well; I have no complaint about teaching in China. I only wish  that the staff washroom was located closer to our building.

We love our students in Class No. 3! 

Our team is enjoying teaching in China. I love the students already, particularly the boys who are very lively and enthusiastic. Some of my students live close to the school and that in many families, both of their parents work. There is  a student whose parents are silkworm farmers and another student's father is a silk thread maker.

One thing I did not expect to find is how popular cell phones are among the high school students in China. Many secondary school students have and carry their cells with them to school. A sign of China's economic growth and the improvement in the Chinese living standard, perhaps?

R.T.
Guangxi, China

My First Day at a Rural School in Guangxi, China

One of the mandate of TECA - Toronto Education Communications Associates is to provide  training to students, teachers and school administrators.

To this end, I joined a charitable organization from Canada to provide training for oral English to high school students in China this summer.


Our first Day at the Secondary School's English  Summer Program

It was pretty exciting today as it was the first day of the summer program. We had breakfast at our hotel with our team and then walked to school together.

The school displayed a sign at the front entrance in both English & Chinese to welcome us on the first day

The school is much better than we have expected. However, we should not be surprised considering that there are only two secondary schools in this town. The one we are teaching at is the bigger one of the two.

Canadian teachers at the Opening Ceremony 

There are over four thousand secondary school students in this school with many of the student body coming from various villages and small towns in the region.

The opening ceremony was held in the school auditorium attended by all the students in the program, English teachers of the school, the school principal and our entire team of volunteer teachers from Canada.

A good icebreaker game for the class

My class is class number 3 with 19 students on the list, but only 17 showed up.

The students have been assigned according to their academic achievements so we are getting one of the top classes.

The students were a little shy to start with but warmed up to us after we played some icebreaker games.

We also did an introduction about ourselves.

The students were very interested in looking at my family pictures and were awed at the fact that one of my sons went to Yale University.

Students were interested in the story books I brought from Canada

I brought a pile of high interest English story books with me from Canada and did a book display in the classroom encouraging the students to read as much as possible in English in the next two weeks.

The students were very interested in these story books.

Students from another class came to visit us.




















We taught our class the first lesson and we did the introduction activity together.

It was a lot of fun when students could practice what they had just learned a few minutes ago with students from another class.

At the end of our first day, the shy Chinese students started to converse in English and were fully participating in all the learning activities.

It was a great first day. I am really looking forward to the next two weeks of teaching in China.


R.T.
Director
TECA - Toronto Education and Communications Associates
Volunteering my service in
Guangxi, China

A Beautiful Ride Through the Spectacular Mountains of Guangxi, China

My spouse and I are in China for a volunteer teaching assignment. We arrived in Nanning two days ago.

Our team spent the entire day yesterday doing our training and getting ready for our teaching assignment. We will be teaching English to students in rural China for the next two weeks.

Today, we left Nanning and took a five hour bus ride into the rural part of China.

Our charity organization has been involved in charitable activities for the past twenty years in the remote rural part of China helping poor students and families.

Isolated by mountain ranges, the province of Guangxi is one of the poorest regions in China. Children living in this region have tremendous  difficulty getting to school for a proper education.
Some have to walk hours to go to school; some stay home because of this.

The CRRS organization chooses to do its work in this region where the needs are the greatest.

We passed by huge mountain ranges and were awed by the beautiful mountain scenery. The bus went through numerous tunnels opened up recently by the government.

I was in this region in 2009. This time I could see improvement in the living condition of the average people.

It was evident that the government has invested a lot in building infrastructures such as tunnels through the mountains and roads connecting the various villages and towns enabling easier road access for area residents to the outside world.

Our five hour bus journey took us through spectacular mountain scenery in the province of Guangxi, China

At around 7:30p.m. we arrived at the hotel where the English teacher from the local high school was waiting for us.

We walked to the school in the rain and the school held a reception for our first night d there. We met the principal and other school official. I was originally seated at the VIP table with the school officials but could not stomach the special food served there, so I was changed to another table.

We are pumped up and excited to meet with the students the next day!

R.T.
Director - TECA
Toronto Education &
Communications Associate
Volunteering in
Guangxi, China

A Training Day in Nanning, Guangxi, China

Training Day in Nanning, Guangxi, China

Our full day of training in Nanning, China

We did not have much of a break in Nanning. After resting for the night, we started our full day training bright and early the next morning at 9 a.m. sharp.

Though the place where we had our meals was not located in the same building, it was only a stone throw away. It gave us some good exercises walking back and forth for our meals.

Each teaching team takes turn teaching a mock lesson

There are twenty one people on this team for the Project Shine trip with a team from Vancouver, and Toronto as well as a member joining us from Calgary. We did not know nor meet each other until last night at our first meal together.

R. and her teaching partner demonstrating their lesson.

Both teams had their respective training meeting in their own city prior to our arrival to China.

However, today was a busy day of training with our teaching partner, working together for the first time.

All team members were given the teaching material and wete asked to go through the lessons on our own.

Each team took turns to present a mock lesson to the entire team demonstrating the different teaching technique.

I enjoyed learning about the 5 Love Languages

Esther went through the five languages of love with us reminding us that we all have our own ways of showing love to students, friends and family members.

We also went through the songs, the skit and the performance. It was a full day of activities and a fun experience working with different people from across Canada.

R.T.
Nanning
Guangxi, China

Leaving for the Project Shine STM in Guangxi, China

Cathay Pacific - always our preferred airline for flying to Asia

Google is not allowed in China, therefore I could not log on to write my blog for the past two weeks. We just landed in Hong Kong now so I can catch up on what has happened over the past two weeks.

Project Shine Day 1 - July 5 

What a busy past few days! We got the house cleaned and  ready for J. to be back from Asia anytime while we would be away for the next few weeks. He called us the day before we left for our trip and we did as much as we could to get the house ready. Good thing we have a great neighbor who will look after our mails and mow our lawn while we are away.

The M & M Store in the Hong Kong airport

We got to the airport before 10:30pm on Wednesday evening and met up with Rosanna; we met her son and daughter in law and Rebecca and the rest of the gang, Pauline and George whose parents, brother and sister were there to see him off. What a supportive family for his experience in China!

Cathy Pacific is always our preferred airline when we travel to Asia.

One of the cultural exhibits at the HK airport

 The plane took off around 1:45am and it was a huge one fully loaded with passengers. Rosanna was sitting with us.

 After watching a few documentaries and chatting with our friend, we landed in  HK at around 5:30am.

Hong Kong Harbour as viewed from our plane - one of the busiest seaports in the world 

Shanghai Airport

While waiting for our connecting flight for a few hours, we ate the famous wonton before catching our connecting flight  to Shanghai via China Eastern Airline departing from HK at 9:45am.


















We had a few hours at the Shanghai airport.

We enjoyed a mini art show at the onsite art gallery.

Shanghai Airport , a clean and busy airport

We left Shanghai airport at 3:45pm, arriving to Nanning around 6:30pm.

I sat by the window seat both times and had a good view of China from the sky for a few hours.

I looked out of the window and was amazed by what I saw.

Though having flown numerous times across the different continents, I had never seen such stunning 3 D cloud formations.

I was mesmerized by the various shapes and forms of the clouds that shaped like a city above the sky.


I must have looked out of the window for the entire time during our flight. It was absolutely spendid!

Nanning Airport, Nanning, Guangxi, China

Watching the clouds and taking pictures kept me busy for the entire flight. Before long, we landed in Nanning, in the province of Guangxi, China.

We met up with Deakin and some teammates arriving from Beijing at the Shanghai Airport. We learned that Wayne’s flight from Beijing was delayed.

Our team arriving at Nanning Airport

Later we learned that there were lots of problems  for those people going to Nanning via this route and we must remember not to connect flights at the Beijing Airport  next time.

Our first meal as a team together in Nanning, China

After checking into the hotel in Nanning, we had our first meal together as a team at the hotel's restaurant.

The Toronto. Vancouver and Calgary team met up for the first time 

It was quite a trip getting to Nanning, which not our final destination yet. Though already taken a number of flights, we still need to take a five hour bus ride to get to the rural remote town.

We travelled for more than 30 hours and as soon as I hit the bed, I was sound asleep in a few minutes.

R.T.

Nanning
Guangxi, China