Wandering Misfit: Part 21 ... not with a bang but with a whisper

     As promised today we are going to delve deep into the chaos that is teaching English in a Chinese primary school.

     One of the best stories I remember was the first day I had a new T.A. for the primary school. When I first started teaching there I had a male T.A. who was normally pretty good but the primary school classes just ruined him. This is a man who 6 months later would end up managing one of our satellite schools literally brought to tears on several occasions by an unruly bunch of 11 year old children.

     That's why when I was told I was getting a different T.A. I was both relieved and worried. When they told me it was a T.A. who had literally finished her training only the week before my heart sank.

     When we headed out to classes that Thursday I was determined to be firmer with the class, the last thing I wanted was this young, shy T.A. being so demoralized that she up and quit (a response I really thought possible).

     Before I go on I should maybe admit that within the next 12 months this same T.A. would go on to be one of the best I've ever met. I've only ever seen her raise her voice once in all the time I've known her (but that is a whole other story) and yet she demands respect from her students.

     So in we walked and surprise, surprise the kids were going crazy. As soon as they noticed the change in T.A. they got even louder and their behaviour got worse. At this point I decided to take matters into my own hands and started yelling at the kids to sit down and shut up. As I've said before I am not particularly good at this and to be honest it has never worked for me.

     In this particular class, the first of three every Thursday, there was one girl that pretty much ran the show. She was the real ringleader but catching her doing anything wrong was nearly impossible. She had basically made an art form out of causing chaos and not being implicated when it all went south.

     Now even as I started to get flustered and run out of voice the new T.A. just turned to me and asked if she could have a couple of minutes. Sure I told her knowing that tirades and threats from other T.A.s had completely failed to have any impact in the past.

     Instead of yelling or banging the ruler on the big metal desk she quietly slipped into the rows between the seats heading straight for little miss trouble maker. Apparently in less than five minutes she had already figured the pattern out and was headed straight for it's source.

     As she reached the girl's desk the class started to quieten down, it seems just like me they were waiting to see what was about to happen. So Susan (the T.A.) bends down so her mouth is right beside the girl's ear and she stands there for a couple minutes just whispering to her.

     Even as I watched the girl's face just seemed to crumple in on itself and in less than a minute the girl was sobbing. Not yelling or crying out loud, not even crocodile tears but that slow sob that you know will last for a while.

     Slowly and gently Susan pulled her to her feet and told her to stand in the aisle. After that the class was much more subdued. Don't get me wrong it didn't turn them into little angels but one good look from Susan was enough to quieten them down most of the time.

     After the class (40 minutes later) the rest of the kids went to break but the trouble maker was still in the aisle sobbing. Susan went over and had a chat with her and the girl seemed to brighten up a bit but was far from her usual obnoxious self.

     As we were leaving later on that day I asked Susan what she'd said but she point blank refused to tell me. In fact I never did find out what it was she had whispered in the girl's ear that day. All I know is that from that point on not only did the students learn to respect this shy young lady but the foreign teachers did too.

     Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger. 

Wandering Misfit: Part 19 ... and the list goes on

     It isn't only the locals that choose strange and unusual English names. Even amongst foreign teachers I have seen some odd choices when giving out names to students.

     The first one that comes to mind was a class I took over from someone else. When the class was brand new it had started with 11 children. For some reason, presumably known only to themselves, the foreign teacher in question had decided to give all of the students names beginning with T. This meant that for the boys for example there was Tom, Tommy, Tim, Ted and Tony. While the girls were called Tina, Tessa, Trudy, Tania, Tami and Tiffany. Altogether it made for a rather confusing situation.

     Other classes I have taught or at least covered for others included ones where all of the students were named after characters from a specific tv show and ones where the kids were named after places.

     Overall it really doesn't make a big difference after all they will most likely go on to choose new names for themselves as they get older if they continue with learning English. Somewhere in my mind though it just made me slightly uncomfortable both handing out new names because I was too lazy to learn their real names and also making the sole judgement call on what that name would be.

     By the time I was a year in I had gotten to the point where I simply refused to do it and made the T.A., kids or parent come up with names. Usually this worked pretty well, they often chose names that sounded as close to the poor kid's actual name as they could. Sometimes however it went badly wrong with kids choosing names like sheep and parents going for names like Ilex (pronounced Aleth according to the paretns involved by the way).

     All in all names to me ended up being something I tried to avoid after all it is hard remembering 100+ names when you only see the kids once a week without adding the strange and unusual to the mix. Personally I've never been good with names but I can't count the amount of times I have called a student by the wrong name so I always tried to make it as simple for myself as possible.


     Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger. 

Wandering Misfit: Part 18 ... the student formerly known as Lucy

     Staying with names I was reminded writing the last post of a great student I had who had a terrible time with her name.

     I took over a class from the previous senior teacher and one of the girls really disliked me for replacing him. The kids in the class were in their early teens and so were just starting to get a little angsty. When I took over the class the girl's English name was Lucy. A little plain but overall pretty much okay.

     After 3 weeks of refusing to speak to me Lucy finally calmed down and decided that maybe i wasn't all that bad. She decided though that now she was old enough to pick a name for herself and that now she had a new teacher it was the perfect time.

     The name she settled on was Candy. Now I tried really hard not to groan or to discourage her after all she had only just decided to stop sulking in the corner and talk during class.

      The very next week though she came storming into class, walked right up to me and yelled "I hate you" right in my face. Not sure yet what exactly I had done to receive this kind of venom I waited to see what would come next. The T.A. looking a little worried went off to talk to Candy. Sitting in the corner chatting the T.A. suddenly started to laugh.

     At this point I was feeling a little hard done by and out of the loop so I set the other kids on a writing task and headed over to see what was up. It turns out that Lucy/Candy was upset because I didn't tell her that Candy was  stupid name. Apparently my instinct the week before had been dead wrong.

     At this point Lucy vowed once more to change her name but this time she said she would do her research first.

     Next week eventually rolled around and in walked Lucy. "So what is your new name?", I asked. "I thinked a long time and I want my name to be Reborn because that is what I am", was the answer. Turns out that when she said she was going to do research she really meant she was going to use a dictionary.

     Thinking back on the result of her last odd name choice i tried to explain that maybe she was being a tiny bit too literal, but she wasn't having any of it.

     From that point on she became to all but herself "the student formerly known as Lucy". As far as I know she still calls herself Reborn and no-one else in the class ever got the Prince reference.

     Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger. 

Wandering Misfit: Part 17 ... what's in a name?

     I know that I have been jumping around a bit lately and not really following any sort of order. I gets hard to write in any kind of sequence, every time I tell a little bit of the story I get caught up in memories it brings back and tend to get sidetracked.

     Because of that I am going to just try and stick to a single theme for each post from now on and avoid the issue of when things happened altogether.

     Today I wanted to talk about names. I said before that the T.A.s all had English names tomake it easier on us foreigners. For the same reason every time a new student came into the school they were also given an English name if they hadn't already chosen one.

     A lot of the time parents would choose English style names for their kids. Unfortunately this often ended up creating some pretty cringe worthy names. I remember one poor 6 year old boy I had whose mother decided his name should be Seven. Yep, she called her kid a number, should have seen the look on the poor kids face every time someone asked "What's your name and how old are you?".

     Some other strange names came into the mix. Because almost all characters in Chinese are made up of a consonant followed by one or more vowels names that end in a vowel sound are very popular. At one point I had 2 Cindys, 2 Lilys and a Candy all in the same class.

     Aside from names ending in y or a vowel certain other names are incredibly popular too. For a while I had 7 different students named Angel in only 11 classes (about 100 or so kids). Summer, Sunshine and other similar names are a perennial favourite for girls too.

     Boys tend to have a wider array of "acceptable" names but that doesn't stop names like Tom and Harry dominating. Boys are also not immune from the stranger names that evolve, with names like Tiger, Putin and Severus all amongst my former students.

     Even the T.A.s come up with the occasional weird moniker, you'd think their knowledge of English would help them know better. Names such as Purple ("because it's my favourite colour") and Coco spring to mind for the girls. Meanwhile the male staff seemed determined to be ridiculed by the foreign teachers picking such wonders as Chicken and Panda.

     Overall names and naming were a great past-time and source of amusement for us. That's not to say that some foreign teachers didn't give out some weird names of their own.

   Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger. 

Wandering Misfit: Part 15 ... a shock to the system

     The rest of my classes that first Saturday were not nearly as bad but I still found myself drained and stressed by the end of it. Even after coming from working longer hours I had never been so mentally and physically tired. I have worked as a labourer and as a community staff worker both of which can get pretty intense but apparently running around after little kids still took a greater toll.

     Admittedly as time went on I found myself less stressed and less tired by classes and the job became in some ways the easiest I had ever had, but for those first few weeks it was tough. One of the biggest issues even as I became more comfortable was simply keeping up with what was going on in the classroom. When you have up to 18 little kids all running around and you are supposed to keep them all entertained and active for 90 minutes it can get to be a headache.

     Now the T.A.s were always a great help but all of our classes especially our younger ones were supposed to be based on TPR (total physical response) methods. That means that the kids need to be running, dancing, singing and playing games along with the simple act of learning a new language.

     It is also, to begin with at least, be very frustrating when no one (including the T.A.) understands what you are saying or what you want them to do. Simple games can take forever to set up and demonstrate and when that happens kids get bored fast. Bored kids tend to do things you'd rather they didn't and on it goes.

     I feel like I am making this all sound pretty terrible but honestly it really did have it's bright moments and tomorrow I'll try and find a few of those gems rather than go on complaining about how tough it all is :)

      Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger.

Wandering Misfit: Part 14 ... enter the children

     So Saturday morning rolled around. We taught most of our classes across the weekend because most of our students had to go to normal schools during the week. My very first class at 8 o'clock was a group of 12 3 and 4 year olds.

     At this point I had never really had anything to do with little kids so I really had no idea what I was doing. In they come with their parents. The first few are not too bad they are pretty fidgety but they are pretty young after all. As the next few start to come in though one of the new arrivals starts to cry. Now I don't know about you but even after years of dealing with it I still have trouble with crying children, especially when their parents are sitting in the back of the room watching what I am going to do about it.

     Thankfully instead of the usual complement of a single T.A. I had 3 that morning for exactly that reason. Very quickly though all 3 of my T.A.s were tied up with one issue or another. It is amazing how one crying child very quickly leads to a whole class of them.

     By now I was simply sitting in a tiny little baby chair up the front of the class waiting and wishing I was pretty much anywhere else. I remember thinking "at least it can't get much worse". You know what they say about thinking things like that though. Right in the middle of the crying and running around screaming Summer walked into the class.

     Summer as I said before was a pretty strict and severe kind of person even though she was small she was also pretty tough. I'm not sure what I expected but whatever it was what actually happened wasn't it. Summer took one good look at what was happening, came to the front of the class and stood next to me. The next thing I know she is bellowing orders to the kids to sit down and behave. She started so suddenly and so loudly I have to admit even I jumped a little.

     Amazingly all of the kids but one simply stopped. They stopped running around, they stopped screaming and they stopped crying. Slowly but surely all but the original crying girl came and sat in front of Summer and I. From the look on many of their faces I think they were at that point pretty much as surprised as I was.

     I've never had a class begin as badly as that since and as much as I felt uncomfortable on that first day I am glad it happened because it taught me a lot about how to handle these kids, things I would keep using for the next 5 years. Don't get me wrong though there was no epiphany here just the start of a very long, very steep learning curve.

     Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger.

Wandering Misfit: Part 13 ... whole new kids

     So after a couple of weeks of sitting through some of the dullest training I've ever had I was finally deemed ready to be let loose on actual students. I was honestly pretty nervous about this bit because I had never really had much to do with kids and have to say that I had never really liked kids much.

     Unfortunately for me I was given a whole schedule worth of new classes. Later on I would come to see this as a massive advantage, having the opportunity to really make these classes my own, but to start with it was a seriously daunting situation.

     Most of the students I ended up with were under 10 years old and a whole lot of them had never even seen a real live foreigner never mind been in an English class. I even ended up with some students who had never been in school full stop. My youngest was just 2 years old when I started with them.

     Another thing to remember is that none of these children spoke any English at all. It was not like they had a basic knowledge and needed some help. My entire schedule was based on students who knew absolutely no English at all.

     Rory McDonald is an online marketer and digital entrepreneur, co-founder of the Online Business Expert and passionate blogger.