Considering I am in fact in China to teach English, it seems like a good idea to actually write about my experiences of Chinese schools so far. I have been teaching for over a month now, and i'll be completely honest, i still find it unbelievably difficult. Let me tell you some highlights so far...

Lets start with some little bits and pieces before any stories. My classes vary from around 40 to 55 students, and at first this seemed pretty intimidating. It turns out that the only difficulties with such a big class are keeping everyone's attention and trying to find the students who are talking over me. In a class over 50 students, its anyones guess to who won't be quiet.. I teach 12 classes, so in total I have around 600 students. They all get one lesson with me a week, but they do still have a Chinese English teacher. With so many students, there is no chance of learning everyone's names. i even asked for a suggestion on learning all the names a few weeks in and the answer was basically that I never would. i did try though! I have a list of the names of every student i teach, written in both Chinese characters and western script. Some students even give themselves English names - for example I actually teach two Stephen Hawkins. I should have put that in my personal statement for university, but I guess at least in my next CV I can write "I taught Stephen Hawkins English"

. I have rather strange working hours at school. I never start any earlier than half 12 (1 now that we have moved on to winter time), and I finish generally around 7 in the evening. This is because I never have a lesson earlier than 4th period. In Chinese schools, there are 8 periods in a day - 4 before the lunch break and 4 afterwards. I never work periods 1-3 or period 8. But what about the students? Well, their day is horribly long. Starting around half 9, they won't finish until half 7. It is true that the lunch break is longer here in China, but 8 lessons in a day must be hard work on the poor students. I am told that the students at the high school have it even worse than my middle school students however. Senior 3 students appear to work 7 days a week, with only a few days off each month. And then there are the senior students who board at the school. They start earlier than their fellow non-boarding students and are expected to do homework periods after school has finished. We hear bells ringing at the school even at 11 o clock at night.

Once again off exploring just deleted 2 whole paragraphs...dear owners of this website, if you happen to read this blog, sort it out please!

I mentioned in the last paragraph 'winter time'. Here in Xinjiang, we have two different timetables throughout the year, summer time and winter time. As the light hours and temperature change so drastically here, the schools make the day start later and end earlier in winter. both have the same number of lessons, of the same length, but in order to shrink the day, other parts of the school day get squashed slightly. The lunch break for example is shortened from 2 hours to an hour and a half and there are fewer Chinese exercise breaks (a sight to behold I must add - i will write about those in the future). I used to cycle back home for lunch every day, but now we are on winter time I don't have the time, so have to stay in town.

Each day as I come through the school gates, I am greeted by the grounds/gate staff. The two women always smile happily and wave, but I had wait a while before the man at the gate would say ni hao and give a friendly nod. Only after I played basketball and table tennis with him and the PE staff did he become more friendly. On a side note, yes the Chinese are infinitely better at table tennis than me (and everyone else on the planet). What is a little strange about the grounds staff is that they all wear army fatigues. At the high school they go one step further. The staff wear army fatigues and there is a big pile of riot gear by the gate. This is probably down to the riots that happened all over Xinjiang before we arrived, sparked by ethnic tensions between the local Muslim minority and the Han Chinese. But the fact is, people in army gear, and piles of riot shields are a new experience for me at a school.

On another quick side note, remember I said that senior 3 students work seven days a week, with only a few days off? It's a holiday today and the school bell just rang along with the loud communist music that always accompanies it (we live right next to the high school, so i hear the bell whenever it rings from the apartment).

Back to 二中学校 (No.2 Middle School). Chinese classrooms are a little different to the ones I'm back to in the UK. I have mentioned in a previous blog that the myth that Chinese students are perfectly behaved is not real, so I won't talk about Chinese behaviour in detail. In the UK, no teacher would have tables of two all facing the board, but here in China they do just that. Admittedly, like most countries in the world, but hey, we're different in the UK. Each class room also has the wonderful addition of a Chinese flag and communist sign to remind the class that they live in China, just in case they forget. Either some students or teachers are also amazing at drawing in chalk, as the board at the back of each classroom is amazingly decorated in every room. The blackboard at the front of the room often has Chinese characters sprawled across it from previous lessons when I walk in, and I wonder every time how on earth they manage to write complex characters in chalk - a most unwieldy writing tool. Every room also has a speaker in it to boom either Chinese communist music or strangely 'fuer Elise', followed by a lively 'shang ke!' (Lesson starts!) at the start of each lesson. It usually interrupts me as I'm explaining what the plan for the day's lesson is. One thing I do really like is that I get a raised platform to teach from. They all think I'm very tall anyway, but I must look like a giant on my little raised section of the classroom.

Now, about actual teaching. At the start it was incredibly hard work, but coming up to 2 months on, I feel I'm learning how to deal with lessons. Most of my lessons have been taught using only the blackboard, and lots of talking. I am after all there mainly to help with conversational and spoken English. I did however finally find out last week that It's actually possible to use the computers in the room and give powerpoints and so on. For language teaching, this is a magical discovery as I can stop drawing messy pictures in chalk to explain what something is, and instead have a photo of what I'm trying to explain. My most fun lesson to teach so far was the lesson on music, where I just asked them questions on what music they liked, taught them some new instruments other than just piano and guitar (which they all already knew), and played English songs to them. Well, say English, but English lyric songs would be a better word for it. Crowded house certainly doesn't count as an English band. I was also incredibly happy to make a whole load of new fans of Stephen Wilson, my favourite English artist, and probably the most underappreciated artist in the whole of the UK in my opinion.

Another side note. Something outside is being blown up. Not sure what, but it's noisy…oh China and your constant destruction and reconstruction of buildings.

I have tried a number of different ways of teaching, but still haven't conquered the problem of classes that won't pay attention. Asking students to answer questions on their own doesn't work well - the other students think it's ok not to listen to the student's answer so speak over the top of us. Asking questions to the class as a whole results in no one choosing to answer. I know they understand the phrase 'hands up', as I watched the class of another English teacher and now know a large bank of phrases students know but choose not to understand. I even tried a lecture style lesson, knowing full well that it wouldn't work, just to see what would happen. It just ended up in a very noisy class with 3 or 4 students paying attention. Admittedly they were quiet when I was playing them songs, so maybe I should teach them exclusively through songs…

I have however now got hold of my latest attempt at class control, my new weapon of mass anti-distraction - A small soft toy dog to throw at students to catch. When they catch, they have to answer the question. If they don't catch because they aren't paying attention, they get small soft dog flying towards them unexpectedly, resulting in embarrassment and a desire to pay attention next time. I hope.

Well, at the very least, even if my students never pay attention to me, they do appear to like me as a teacher. I just hope it's not because they see my lessons as an excuse for a break.

I feel like I sound a little damning of the whole teaching experience in this blog, so I'd just like to assure all you readers that it's not the case. Yes, there are bits that could go better but they just happen to be the bits that are fun to write about. Anyway, I need material to write about in the future as well, so the really positive parts of teaching can be left for another blog. I want to wait for a school event that's coming up soon to write about the positives anyway, so look out for it then!

Until next time everyone, I hope you enjoyed reading this rather long post!