TEACHING

Have corrected my spelling in this post now, and have asked myself to see me after class....

Teaching itself would have been a bizarre and fundamentally different experience anyway, but throw Chinese inner city schools, every age between kindergarten and grade 6 in to the mix and you've got enough ingredients for me to create schooboy (or should that now be school teacher?) errors all week long!

I have to admit, that with no experience, a text book with material I could stretch to 2 minutes worth of teaching I was quite nervous at the thought of spending 43 minutes of my first 45 minute lesson in silence. Maybe I could take them through the exploits of my trip so far? Those that would understand would be appalled (if they got the non blog friendly version!) and the others would be just as confused as me trying to teach them English anyway!

Or maybe I could teach them some of my own particular gifts to the English language....things that you wouldn't find in an addition of Oxford, Collins or Webster's?

Thankfully, initial nerves were just that and my first 45 minutes went pretty well, therefore avoiding me warping a generation of Shanghai minds with stories of drunken debauchery and they kept a pure vocabulary.

So, if anyone visits Shanghai and the kids are all snapping their fingers (Ali G stylee) and talking about "nipping for a crafty beer", "getting some Wayne" or screaming "Gisel Griester!" at their mates then don't come looking for me.

Joining just before the end of the semester was a bit tough as I was taking over someone elses work, this meant that I couldn't ease the kids in with my subtle style of laid back inept teaching but had to pick up the reins from a no doubt experienced and qualified professional the kids probably loved!

This also meant that besides the usual "how old are you?" "where are you from?" type questions that get fired at me every 30 seconds and from any distance I was supposed to know what had happened to their other teacher, or more likely given my unsual (unqualified I mean!) approach to teaching it was more like a "what have you done with our old teacher!!??" type questions.

I've now been teaching for just over 2 months now and although the initial novelty of something new has worn off it's not so bad, and don't really have the "I don't wont to go to work" syndrome that seems to affect many.

My relative comfort with the job doesn't mean that it's not without incident though, something bizarre usually happens everyday, whether it's been students taking the piss out of my feet with " you have chicken feet ha ha ha", or children spontaneoulsy breaking out into war (resulting in tears everywhere) and comedy mispellings...my favourite of which is one of my students Bob adament that his name was spelt "Boob".

I nearly lost it with that one in class, in the way that when tired it only takes something stupid like that to set you off.
Unfortunately and like most times, it was only me who thought that was funny...with my 8 year old audience not undertstanding the full comedy value....and perhaps that was a good thing, not something I want to have to explain.

Am having real trouble putting pics on at the moment, but will keep trying as I have some pictures from my classes as well as downtown Shanghai to show you all.

Next blog will be life in general in Shanghai, with all the good bad and ugly bits of life in China.