Anna's Essay

My Valuable Experience

Anna(周立晖)

Being an English teacher for 14 years, I have got my opportunity to participate in the English Teachers Class and Students Summer Camp. When I was told that I should come to the training class, I felt I was lucky but not so happy. Because I should spend 1/3 of my summer holiday on it. I wouldn’t have as much time for relaxation and travels like my colleagues. However, when I am being in the training class, I enjoy it so much that I really don’t want it to come to an end. It is really valuable for my teaching as well as for my life. I have learned a lot from the training class.

In the first week, I had some lectures given by the American teachers from Huntington University. First, Jeff’s lecture “English Communication Competency in the 21st Century” made me realize how important English is . He used a lot of data and important facts which I would like to use to make my students clearly understand that English is becoming the most widely used language in the world. I’m sure they will pay great attention to English study and do better in it . And we teachers need to improve our teaching abilities to be great helpers of the students.

And then from Luke’s performence, I not only learned how the students could achieve success in English, but also the key aspects of Chinese /American cultural differences. And from Valerie, I learned many new ideas about how to teach oral English lessons in the communicative approach, and how to make a lesson plan which should include 8 elements, i.e., objectives, materials needed , warm-up, presentation, 3 practices and closure. Susie gave us some wonderful lessons about Multiple Intelligence Theory. She demonstrated her skills by making the classroom full of laughters.

During the 2nd and 3rd weeks, the American teachers demonstrated how they interacted with students by getting them to dance, sing English songs, play games, etc, like they do in their own classrooms, which enabled our students to practise speaking English all the time. Their smiles, encouragement, enthusiasm greatly impressed both us teachers and the students. Here in the camp, we found major differences between American way of teaching and traditional schooling in China . In our classroom, it is teachers-centred, while the American way of teaching is students-centred. To meet the new standard curriculum, we have found communicative approach is more and more popular with and practical to the students. Here, the Americans vividly showed us how they teach, which is very useful and helpful to my teaching, I think.

Actually, in the two lessons I taught in the camp, I used what I had learned from the American teachers to design my lesson plans. I found my lessons were better than before. My instructor, Errin’s advice and observation notes helpd a lot for my teaching improvement.

For three weeks, I have been cherishing every opportunity to learn from the American teachers. I enjoyed every free talk with special themes to talk about. In fact, in the free talk, both we Chinese teachers and the Americans learned a lot from each other. It’s a good chance to practise my oral English and to know about American culture. After 4:00pm every day, when most of the Chinese teachers had gone home, I stayed to have another talk with one or two American teachers about the essays given to us before hand. We talked about essays. We talked about life. We talked about poems. I really felt grateful to them.

What impressed me most was their teamwork and hard work. They worked very hard together to make everything wonderful and successful.

The 3-week training class and summer camp is very valuable to me, I think. I enjoyed every moment. I enjoyed every lecture. I enjoyed every game. I enjoyed every talk. I enjoyed every song, except “A Goodbye Song”. You know, guys, I really don’t want to say goodbye to the American teachers and to the training class. If I have to, I would love to sing “Friends Forever” to them. Just as Luke said, “Allow me to be friends with you, forever”. I will keep all of you in my mind. I will sow the seeds of love, friendship, and culture, which I think is the most important in my camp experience ,to my colleagues and students.

Another Perspective (from Jim)

My Experience in the English Summer Camp

Jim（朱文靖）

It is my first time I am in the summer camp. I think the experience is valuable both to my oral English and my teaching way in the future.

More than two decades ago, I began the study of English in junior middle school. As a matter of fact, what I had at that time was, apart from a textbook, a respectable English teacher, who made her classes attractive and lively and interesting enough to make me listen to her classes attentively. With my interest in English increasing, I learned more and more English, which was my strongest subject during my six middle school years. Only after I went to the college did I begin to learn to speak English. You might think it is ridiculous, but it’s true. In fact ,many of us began to learn to speak English as well as Mandarin at college. I now often think that today people who really want to study English well are a lot luckier than we were 20 years ago. They have more English magazines and newspapers. They can watch English programmes on TV or listen to English on the radio. They can read essays on the Internet with the help of an e-dictionary. They can listen to the downloaded MP3 files in their easily-carried MP3 or MP4 players. They can even participate in the English summer camp, where they can practise speaking English with native speakers of English. How fortunate they are!

But now today, I am fortunate as well. I came. I studied. I tried my best. For three weeks , I have been cherishing every opportunity to talk to and learn from the American teachers, who are kind and active and responsible and enthusiastic…

Here in the camp I have learned a lot which is brand new to me, and to my colleagues, I think. It is known that Chinese teachers put more emphasis on grammatical competence rather than communicative competence because of the traditional way of teaching and the old curriculum. But now, with the new standard curriculum being implemented, communicative approach, with its emphasis on interactive use of English for meaningful communication, is being more and more popular. And so in the English Teachers Training Class as well as the Students English Summer Camp, we learn how American teachers use the communicative approach in the classroom, which is useful and helpful to my future teaching, I am sure.

Here in the camp , I think students can also develop their communicative competence, i.e. the ability to use English to communicate appropriately in a variety of contexts. In regard to spoken language, communicative competence involves knowing what and how to say what to whom. Communicative classrooms are learner-centered and characterized by an emphasis on language use, fluency, authentic language and contexts, and negotiation of meaning, which is new to our students, while the English classes in China have historically been conducted using the Grammar-Translation Method, a teacher-centered methodology that is known for producing excellent grammarians and high scores, with limited abilities in speaking and listening. Now here in the camp, students are highly motivated to speak English. They interact with native speakes. They like the relaxed, casual and enjoyable way of teaching and talking. They have the opportunity to get to know Americans and American culture. They get the American teachers’ attention and encouragement. They actively participate in games, singing, dancing, sports, etc. And just the experiece in the summer camp , I think , will make them more interested in the study of English, which, I am sure, is vital to their English improvement!

In a word, a beneficial aspect of the English camp is that it complements in a limited but distinctly different way the formalized school experience by affording teachers and students the opportunity to focus almost exclusively on interactive use of English.

I value my experience in the camp.

FINAL THOUGHTS

It is always hard to know how to wrap up my thoughts on a trip like this. I find myself sitting and thinking about the different people we encountered. We spoke a different language, we’ve had vastly different life experiences, we have different belief systems – but there is a common bond that brings us together and helps us to realize that we have much in common.

During our next-to-last free talk, I shared a poem I had written. The poem did not so much reflect my own search for meaning as it articulated the search of a person who senses a greater meaning in life – but isn’t quite sure where to find it. I share it here because some asked me about it – not because I think it is a literary masterpiece (no literary critique, please!).

I Wonder
Jeff Sherlock

I walk outside under the stars and the moonlit night sky and I wonder…

I hold my newborn son in my arms, see that he has all his fingers and toes in the right places and I wonder …

I see an old man and an old woman walking in the park holding arms supporting one another in their old age and I wonder …

I watch a teacher with a rowdy bunch of students patiently and lovingly instructing them to become productive citizens and I wonder …

I look at the crops growing in the fields, the snow on distant mountains, the sea crashing against the rocks and I wonder …

Is it really likely that all this is just an accident, just random molecules joining and separating without any plan?

Are children just the visible product of a chemical process that began when two masses of matter experienced a chemical attraction toward one another?

Are the feelings of love that people experience no more than a programmed instinct for survival of the species?

Do teachers love their students merely out of duty – and what is duty anyway
without meaning?

Are the green crops, white snow, and blue sea just there?

I doubt it.

If so, why does my heart yearn for peace, for a more thorough explanation, for a deeper meaning?

I wonder.

Reading Luke’s blog (below), I find myself wrestling with many of the same questions. It is impossible to know the impact that our three-week presence in China will have.

Certainly there was a lot of enthusiasm from both teachers and students, an expressed commitment to do something different in the classroom. Absolutely there were important discussions that took place that may lead to further seeking later on. And definitely there emerged from our time together a deeper understanding of one another.

Never again will members of our team think of “the Chinese” as a 1.2 billion nameless, faceless mass of humanity; rather, we will remember Anna, Jim, Ray, Bonnie, Jenny ….

Never again will our Chinese friends think of “the Americans” as we are defined by the media – violent, hedonistic and spoiled; rather, they will remember Valerie, Gil, Susie, Charlie, Bridger …(One young Chinese girl wrote on her blog site of how much she missed us.)

We appreciate the continued thoughts of people who followed this trip. Please continue to be concerned about the long-term impact of the relationships that were built. Thanks so much.

Home . . . and reflecting!

We're back. We're safe and well. We're tired. I am proud of the team - they worked hard and did a terrific job!

So, what difference does it make that a team of Americans travels to China to lead an English Camp? How do you measure the impact of such an experience? We could read the reflection essays written by each teacher - which were really positive - but that doesn't mean they'll change the way they approach teaching when they face huge challenges back in their classrooms this fall. We could average the satisfaction numbers on the exit surveys - again very positive - but does that tell us anything about the depth of relationships which were established? We could look at pictures of our new friends in China and hold the many gifts and mementos we were given, but that doesn't really tell us if our new friends are looking at life any differently as a result of our presence. And now we're back home, and we wonder whether we made a difference.

In one of my free talk sessions last week, I was asked, "If God would grant you three wishes, what would you ask for?" Wow! What a question! I tried to think carefully, and came up with the following three honest requests:

1) Health for my family.
2) That my soul would live forever.
3) That I could exist in China and the USA at the same time.

Each of these answers allowed the opportunity to talk at some length about my foundational ideas of reality, meaning, and purpose in life. As we went around the group asking the same question, one of the teachers simply said, "There is no god, so I don't think about such things. I just work hard each day."

Later in the conversation, they told me about a recent situation in China. Some time ago, a university student rescued a farmer from an attack. In the process, the university student was killed. It seems that this prompted a national conversation about whether the university student was a hero or a fool. Some thought that the student's life was more valuable than the life of the farmer for whom he died. They asked me what I thought. Again, I tried to think carefully. I said that this story was parallel in some ways to the definitive feature of Christianity - God sending His Son to die for humanity. I was able to talk about a famous saying, "There is no greater love than this, that a man would lay down his life for a friend."

At the end of the free talk session, they asked me if I really believed in God. I said that I did. To this, the one teacher said, "I believe in myself." Having heard this before, I have a standard reply, which is, "You must be a very strong person and be able to control many things to only believe in yourself. There is so much outside of my control that I've found I need to trust someone else." He laughed out loud and looked at the others in the group and said, "He believes in someone other than himself." It was a poignant moment.

So, how does one measure the impact of a team of English teachers in China? I think we won't really know for quite some time.