Memories of China CIP 2009

Well, finally I’m back to update my blog again. Actually not really back in the mood, but I’ve always blogged about my overseas trips, so let’s not make this the exception.

Well let’s start from the question that my colleague asked me on the last day of our trip, when we were already back in Singapore. ‘This trip is very much different from the Cambodia trip right?

I totally agreed. But of course it’s actually not so fair to make the comparison because the location was different and the people accompanying were different. On top of that the things that we did were rather different too. There’s no ‘constant’ so to speak (in the scientific sense), except me and him.

One thing that I really enjoyed in Cambodia was not the teaching… but the painting of the murals. We didn’t manage to paint any murals this time, which I was sort of disappointed. As for the English teaching, firstly the standard in China and in Cambodia is like miles apart. We could teach simple sentences for primary 3 in Cambodia, and they could read simple words, but in China, they only start their ABCs in primary 3, means we are teaching from scratch. So we’re like teaching English in Mandarin. And they have a slightly different alphabet song from us.

And now, I don’t have to do anything while they’re teaching, other than giving advice sometimes and helping out in the small group discussions. And of course taking pictures of the children and the little teachers.

Major problems that we faced were actually getting the attention of the children. Because of their background, many still do not understand the importance of English, or many simply do not even know what this language is. Therefore many show no interest. The progress of the students is also slow, and many a times, the little teachers were going too fast that they just stare blank and gave up.

Actually observing my students aka the little teachers, made me understand a lot of things and why we do or do not do during lessons. As much as we tell them, see this is what YOUR teachers have been dealing with. Now that you have the experience of it, you should know how your teachers were feeling when they were teaching. On the other hand, as a teacher, I see a lot of things too. I’m actually one who is very satisfied with chorus answers. Most of my students simply shout out the answers before I could ask anyone to answer it. The few days of lessons in Fengban Primary made me see directly the disadvantages of chorus answering. Most of the kids simply chorus with their classmates. When it comes to doing work, they simply couldn’t write a single alphabet.

The school was very small, like the school in Cambodia, 1 class per level. But the class size is only about 20 whereas the Cambodian school had up to about 40. But the school is rather big I would say, had a classroom block, a hostel, a canteen building, another classroom block for the kindergarten, and a rather large open space with a basketball court.

I had rather long conversations with one of the teachers there to understand the school’s situation… Everything in the school is provided for, including textbooks, even pillows and quilts in the hostels are provided by the government. So the students only need to buy exercise books and foolscap paper and stationary… The government also gives them a sum of money, calculated according to the number of students they have, for the running of the school… including phone, water, electricity bills, renovations, purchasing things for the school, building new facilities… But with the number of students they have in the school, they actually do not get a lot of money, considering their campus is actually quite big.

The teachers there were definitely not as fortunate as us. They had to teach almost every subject. Except English, which they had one teacher to specially teach English. But for all other subjects like Art, Music, Chinese, Science, PE etc, they had to take turns to teach every year. And of course, their pay is ‘peanuts’ as compared to us. I think their annual salary is not even my one month’s pay… (And to think I’m complaining about the 0.25 month end of year bonus).

But I admire their passion for the children. I saw the teachers play with the children, running around, and we got to learn new games like ‘Xiao Mi Feng’ and ‘Rabbit and Wolf’. They’re like one of them, but when the teacher disciplines them, the children are all ears. For me, I think I accomplished the first part, becoming one of them, but the second part on disciplining them… well, there’s still room for improvement…

Oh and I envy their pace of life. The teachers, including the Principal, were playing badminton and basketball in between lessons. Here, we’re slogging in our staffrooms and preparing lessons…. What a contrast… Maybe there’s where the difference in pay comes in…