Summer Project: Small Victories

Each summer in Peace Corps China, program managers from each province help organize teacher trainings and language camps for Chinese English teachers in K-12 settings. Peace Corps volunteers teach lessons on Western style teaching methodologies and help the trainees improve their oral English, so they can go back to their classrooms with fresh ideas and skills. It seems to be a good opportunity to try to instill some of our ideas about communicative teaching and cultural awareness into the younger generation, so hopefully they won't be so shocked when they meet foreign teachers in college for the first time (foreign teachers who ask them to do strange things like work in groups, speak without notes, avoid plagiarism, and think independently). Also it hopefully will provide non-college bound students more opportunities to acquire communicative English language skills which might translate into better job prospects when they test out or can no longer afford to attend school.

I had been looking forward to summer project ever since our winter in-service training session when volunteers from the china 15 group said that it had been one of the highlights of their service. I wish I would have realized at the time that, like most experiences in the Peace Corps so far, enriching experiences like these are generally hard won (but still worthwhile) and usually require a large investment of effort in what seem, on the surface, to be minor victories. In our favor, we have an amazing, supportive and motivated program manager, so our Chongqing project was planned far in advance, and we felt pretty lucky to have the extra time to organize ourselves, review curriculum and plan lessons. This is especially appreciated in light of the lead time we are usually afforded in China, as we usually only know about school events or teaching schedules a week in advance (at the most).

We were recruited into the group for teaching middle school teachers, and we decided to cut our workload and narrow our focus into 2 day blocks, so each pair of us could be "experts" in a certain topic such as reading, grammar, pronunciation, etc. Richy and I decided to focus on writing, since I had had success teaching it over the last two terms. We scoured the summer project curriculum for useful lessons on methodology and mined and modified our own lesson stockpiles to create two days of classes that we hoped would be useful for Chinese middle school teachers looking to supplement their curriculum and help engage their students in the process of learning English. We also wanted to introduce them to some basic theoretical frameworks to understand the methods of teaching English from a Western perspective.

As so often happens with "the best laid plans" in China, the actual execution of our summer project turned out to be significantly more challenging. The first obstacles were the expectations of the trainees. Not much information had been communicated beforehand, so some teachers were expecting a crash course in improving their oral English skills, while others assumed we would be showing them directly how to adapt lessons from their textbooks into Western style lessons.

Another problem was that several (especially older) teachers felt embarrassed engaging in some of the activities meant to model some of the methods of engagement in middle school classrooms. We were suddenly met with non participating trainees boasting a litany of excuses: "I can't see," "I can't write," "I can't speak English well," and "I'm too old to play games." We wondered how they could teach with such debilitating issues. Actually, there were just finding indirect ways to tell us that they weren't into our classes. Our frustrations were best summed up in the question "Why are we here if you don't want to learn what we have to offer?" An education official from Beijing came on the third day of the training and did her best mediate what she correctly identified as a "culture clash." Her comments reflected a deep understanding of both sides of the culture divide, and the way she addressed us directly and honestly was much appreciated. Although, later we all had to take a collective deep breath and soldier on, after the blow of realizing that our teaching wasn't exactly dazzling the audience.

We realized that the teachers in the training were experiencing similar reactions and emotions to what we had experienced in our first weeks in China. Expectations and reality were so different that the temptation to disengage was strong. You can imagine that if your entire worldview and methods of teaching were being challenged, that the concept of change and adaptation can be daunting and exhausting. Of course, from our perspective, we felt like we were already being pretty flexible. After all, we had already agreed to a 3 hour lunch break in the middle of a 4.5 hour day of teaching in order to accommodate the southern Chinese custom of napping in the middle of the day to avoid the heat.

As the days passed, we modified our lessons with each rotation, and it seemed that many of the trainees were starting to understand what we were trying to accomplish. By the final day, we met as a whole group to discuss and brainstorm what had been learned during our two weeks in Wulong. This is some of what they shared:

- How to encourage student confidence
- Teaching for multiple intelligences
- Classroom management
- American culture
- How to take student abilities in to account (differentiated instruction)
- Writing skills
- Independence, open mindedness
- How to write a haiku
- Confidence and bravery for speaking English in the classroom

By the end of the session, the list had more than 20 items. It was heartwarming to see the list unfold, and to see that lessons from each of the volunteers were mentioned. It was that small victory to end a challenging couple of weeks.

Throughout our time in Wulong, one of the middle school trainees had been designated as our translator, as her spoken English was clear and fluent. This meant that she attended every official dinner and trip, and acted as our tour guide when we visited the natural sites of Wulong including the natural bridges and Furong cave. To show our appreciation, we took up a collection to buy her a "thank you" gift. We presented her with a handmade thank you card and a small box of chocolates (a luxury in China) and her tearful response, although unexpected, was another small victory. Her response reminded me that although it might not seem like we made a big difference on the surface, the training had a personal impact on everyone there, and if even a fraction of them learned something meaningful from it to share with their future students, then the effort was worth it.

~Katie