First Month At School.

This week, I have had to submit my first month evaluation to Chatteris as well as have a meeting with my teacher-in-charge on my progress so far and so I thought it a fitting time to share with you some of my observations and thoughts on my first month of teaching here.

Firstly, it has all just gone so super fast! Even though in some ways it feels as though I have been here for quite a long time, my weeks at school have raced by and I can't believe we are in to October already!

I think the best way to describe it all is that it has been quite a major and steep learning curve. After two weeks of general primary orientation, everyone on the program had to go in to schools where the English ability varied greatly as well as what was being required of us in and outside of the classroom. Although we are all on the same program, having had the same training, it is really interesting to see how much our experiences vary greatly in some areas as well as being able to share many common thoughts and feelings too. For me, being a school that is new to having a CNET (someone from our program) around the school, my goal has been to initiate some sort of speaking English outside of designated English lessons (I think they have 9 a week!). To try and get the children to open up and chat to me, and speak English when they see me around the school or when they are in my lessons, will be my Everest in this 9 months! This aim may sound rather simplistic and obvious but compared to some other schools with a structured ELEEP (English language environment enrichment programme - what goes on outside of the classroom and around the school, ie games, english signs etc), this goal will be already established and so their goal may be a matter of raising the bar or creating new ways to challenge them and make them more conversant, which is a real challenge too. Indeed, 8 of the girls are at one school where a common refrain from those working there, is that the children speak better English than they do. These children put on Shakespeare plays in English, and are very used to being around and chatting with English people, and so the challenge is how to stretch them and create new and different ways to get them to speak in english that won't either bore them or that they have not done in previous years or even with other girls on the program, which requires an awful lot of initiatve and innovative thinking so they don't get complacent.

However, at my school, its a different story. This ELEEP program has to be established in the framework of a morning school, where the children arrive at 7:30 and have two 15 minute recess breaks before they go home or out for lunch and then maybe come back for extra curricular activities at which point , the pm students are at the school having lessons (and no, I still can't really tell the difference between who are my students and who aren't apart from the more blank and confused looks I am getting from the supposed pm students who dont have a CNET!) However, after trying (and failing!) at many different strategies and activities to entice them, I am getting used to what works or more commonly what doesn't. Initially many a recess were spent with me in the middle of the playground, with a microphone asking if anyone wants to play duck duck goose (the answer, by the way, was a resounding no or just silent stares) or me dancing alone to actions to 10 little monkeys bouncing on the bed ... haha, its all good character building stuff! But, from next week, we lauch our English speaking day on Wednesday where everyone WILL speak English around the school for the day ... one can only hope!

I also have a program of activities and games to implement around the school aided by an English Ambassador Team (EAT!) composed of some of the strongest English students, which I train weekly! The activities range from movie clips and questions, to playground games, skipping, drawing, board games, twister (which is more common than not a pile on the board). Its chaotic with only 15 minute break of which part of it is having to go and get ready for the next 30 minute lessons, the poor children are so hungry that really all they want to do at recess is eat which is totally understandable - I have been there! But, as the saying goes, you must be cruel to be kind, they will thank me later when their English is incredible (?!) and bless them, more often than not, they have shown themselves willing to multi task for the sake of an interesting game or a film!

Inside the classroom, I teach every P4 - P6 class once a week. The lessons themselves are based around the National Geographic student editions, which I am a little too excited about, because I love that magazine, and there is such scope with the articles. As you can imagine the photographs are amazing (Jonathan, my mentor tells me some of the girls are even afraid of the photos, and I dont blame them actually!) but it gives me a great stimulus from which to design lessons to get them speaking, rather than the usual Suzie went to the shop...etc readers which are much harder to make fun! This month I have done a lot of animals, under the sea, animals in camoflage and mimicing each other (hmm, yes this one was tough!) and I really enjoyed it. Poor students, I am learning a lot on the job as to their english ability as it varies both between classes in one year as well as within each class, as does their level of enthusiasm and their energy but I guess that is teaching for you! Hong Kong students are extremely intelligent, hard working and consciencious as a whole; they excel at maths and science and also on written and very structured tasks, where they have to fill in the answers or complete something on a sheet. They are weaker at the creative side of things where they have to use their imagination to make up things not in a book, and also in speaking English. There is a wide discrepency between what they can write (which is really impressive; sometimes I see their written work and it's about hwo they would improve their school or writing formal letters to people) and what I hear or don't hear them say in class. Even if they know the answer, they are reluctant to say it to me and are very shy and softly spoken. Since most of my lessons are informal, based on being creative and imaginitive and also speaking and not reading focused, it is very different and strange for them to get used to it.

In training, we learned many many games which involved moving the desks to the side of the classroom or puttings desks in to a circle to enhance and enourage a more informal environment but I have very quickly lost that battle at my school. Either they look at you as though you are joking, when you are widely gesticulating or even demonstrating moving a desk to the side of the classroom, or,after MUCH perusasion, they move the desks to the side and then sit at them, squashed around the corners and the walls! You can almost feel the relief when I say okay desks back in to the normal places, as though they have returned in to familair territory!

I also run a drama club (!) For P2 and P3 (which I must say was remarkably popular, 88 of the poor souls had to be turned away, I wanted to cry! - I was willing to say let them all just come but Cecily, probably quite rightly pointed out this would be unwise, and we have chosen 24) Apparantly we are putting on a play (any ideas people?) in May so book your flights out now! I also run weekly meetings with the EAT - the ambassador team, who will help me implement English (hopefully!) around the school. I will also run interview practice for the P6 students as they prepare for their secondary entrance exams later on in the term.

Although I could write more and more about this, I have gone on far enough, sufficed to say that the nice thing about my school is that you appreciate everything, big or small! If you are walking around the corridors and someone sees you and says Good Morning Miss Hannah, I get a little too excited inside but pretend not too as they get scared if I try and engage them in conversation afterwards! Also, sometimes they tell each other off for speaking in Cantonese in class, in case their team loses a point. Or, if people come and find me at recess to come and skip with them or play with them, I am grateful for any English interaction!

All in all, I have just been so lucky with my school. It's a challenge but it'a a really exciting, nice challenge which I am determined to succeed with! The teachers have all been so kind and nice to me considering English is not their first language and my aim is to be quieter and tidier with my desk and all of my things in the staffroom, as I seem to be the only person making any kind of noise as I bang my drawer open to make another cup of tea (they dont drink caffenated drinks hardly either, COMPLETELY unlike practically all english school staff rooms, they just seem to drink water, its amazing!) or as bits of paper splay on to other staffs desks, honestly, I am a mess, but I am trying my best to be more teacher like and profesonal and tidy!

I feel as though I learn so much of what and what not to do every single day, hopefully soon I will start to get a better grasp of it all. All in all, it has been a super fast and overwhelming but enjoyable first few weeks. I can ' t believe how fast it is all going!