Fuddland
Teaching adults is a lot less work than teaching children — since coming to (苏州), I’ve not had to raise my voice once, making for a much nicer feeling in my vocal chords at the end of an average day [the fact that we have whiteboards and marker pens as opposed to blackboards and chalk is also a factor].
Right now I have four groups of students:
Two fairly senior managers from a well-known German home appliance manufacturer, attending an intensive eight-week course to improve their oral communication, which I inherited about halfway through from a departing [in the “fired” sense of the word] teacher. Some of the teaching is shared with a colleague, so they each get one-to-one tuition as well as one-to-two sessions with me, in which I try to encourage discussions more than doing bookwork, to avoid getting in a muddle with my fellow teacher over which page we’re on.
For most of the class I am sitting down at a large table with “the clients” [it’s strange to call people older than myself “my students”], occasionally standing to write on the board, and I get on well with them both, so this has been quite a painless course to run, despite the long hours — five hours a day, five days a week.
Two groups from a small, although still international, electronics company, each of around ten students [closer to my own age], of two different ability levels, although both advanced enough to laugh at my jokes [or should that be, of a low enough level?].
A set of twelve management consultants that I’ve dubbed my “Shot Myself in the Foot” class: I was only supposed to cover them for one lesson whilst a colleague was on holiday, but after the class they petitioned the boss to let me be their full-time teacher for the remainder of the course, which she promptly agreed to in her usual bend-over-backwards-for-the-clients manner. I think it was the fact that I drew half-decent cartoon-like pictures on the board to help with my explanations that swayed them. If the other teacher hadn’t already decided to hand in his notice when he returned from his holiday, I’d have felt slightly more guilty; as it is, I was half flattered and half annoyed with myself for inadvertantly adding to my teaching load.
In the coming weeks, as my current courses run their, er, course, I’ll be taking over from another teacher who’s coming to the end of their contract [revolving door anyone?], as well as starting some new classes from scratch, including a two-week crash course for the seventeen-year old son of the boss of a local business — the twist being he’s Italian. Teaching English to an Italian in China — diverse!
Despite having a good few hours of free time during the day, I’ve been fairly lax at getting out and about — preferring the sanctitude of air-conditioning at home to pounding the streets in the midday sun. And if it’s not sweltering hot, it’s thundering-and-lightninging. I did manage to wander around one of ’s historic pedestrianised shopping streets — protected by law from out-of-character building work — with a souvenir-hunting friend, but soon after we arrived the skies opened and we spent much of the time hopping from one shop awning to the other, before deciding to awwsoddit and get a mild soaking as we walked along the canalside back to the main road, snapping the odd photo along the way.
Comments
Magpie | 2006 / 07 / 07 – 16:16
I wan’t to see some of these half-decent cartoon-like pictures!
David | 2006 / 07 / 07 – 18:24
Re #1: Sorry, those cartoons remain the property of my employer for one year from the date of termination of my contract and thus they currently hold the copyright for said images. :P
Gordon | 2006 / 07 / 10 – 18:25
Sounds like things are going well. I’ve not commented much but I am reading!
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