Reflections of Training and Looking Ahead to Teaching

This past week brought with it some magnificent experiences, not the least of which was my first time "teaching" in front of a class, even if that class was composed of my fellow Yale-China Fellows.  We focused on film reviews and descriptive, sensory language, so I had the students watch a clip of "Transformers" and write down both descriptive terms and their impressions of the clip.  We then did a sentence expansion exercise, where we took the sentence "Transformers is loud" and had each student add a little extra something to the sentence, so it ended up something like "Transformers, unlike the silent movies, is so loud that the audience has tinnitus but is filled with euphoric anguish and is not unable to enjoy Megan's urban foxiness."  I can only hope that my CUHK students can make puns like this - I'd be so proud!  I received a lot of great feedback from the fellows, so even though they say all teacher training flies out the window the moment you step into your first real class, I still pretty confident and really excited as the start of classes approaches!!!  

Orientation and TEFL training were exhausting (though I'm sure nothing like what my TFA counterparts went through!), which is why I haven't had the chance to update much recently.  TEFL training was basically a solid week of learning different pedagogies and practicing different activities for language learning - I definitely came away with some ideas for my own classroom, but again, we'll see how these actually play out once I actually get up there.  Orientation/Conference was three solid days of meetings and classrooms, with people sharing their experiences from the past year as well as guest speakers talking about everything from health and safety in China to genres in linguistics (the latter lecture was from a gentleman named Ahmer Mahboob - great speaker, even better name).  Chrissy and Katie, our two direct supervisors for the fellowship, set a professional, more business-like tone for orientation, which, while some people complained about last year, I actually really enjoyed.  One, I got to try out my fun teacher clothes and two, it really drove home the point that this fellowship isn't just about flitting around Asia for two years, but really working hard at your teaching post and constantly trying to think of ways to improve your teaching skills.  

To be honest, the teaching aspect of this fellowship had been slightly overshadowed in the past few months by other aspects, such as the whole moving-around-the-world thing and trying to learn Cantonese - It was always, "Oh, I'm moving to Hong Kong," not "Oh, I'm going to be a teacher."  But now I think my head is where it needs to be now, and I am so ready to get in there and meet the students.  Even now, as I write this blog post in my flat, I hear some of the first year students running around outside, banging on drums and singing, practicing for some sort of performance, I assume.  I can't wait to get to know them.  I always felt nervous around new students at the beginning of every year at Yale, just because they had so much ahead of them and were about to go on such a huge roller coaster, and they had no idea what they were in for.  But now, I'll be in a different role, one that will hopefully play an integral role in their academic lives here, and I hope that I can inspire them, challenge them, make them think and write and speak in ways they didn't think they were capable of - or at least not make them feel like they are flailing and absolutely lost during their first semester.  

I think one of the extraordinary things about this position is that it allows me to work with students whose position I was just in four short years ago, so I still remember that feeling of coming into college with great excitement but great fear, and that initial "Oh s***" feeling after my first class.  I hope I can strike a balance between challenging them academically and pushing them to the point where they need to be for the English major while still being sympathetic to the crazy upheavals of their lives and if possible, helping them with this jarring transition as much as I can.  I think if I learned anything from Yale, it's that we can be incredibly resilient and can push ourselves further than we ever thought we could (or should) go, so while I don't intend to be lenient with deadlines or grading, I do plan on being as encouraging as possible, letting the students know that as difficult as everything seems in the beginning, they will be able to not only manage it but ultimately succeed in it.  Hopefully they won't just interpret this as I'm going to give them all A's....  

But they're smart kids, so I'm sure they'll be fine.  After all, CUHK is ranked #2 in all of Asia, and #42 in the world, so we're talking the best and the brightest here.  Holla!!

On a lighter note, I also ate a pigeon head last week.  Actually, I ate two.  Don't worry, it's a tradition, and it was at a restaurant that specializes in pigeon.  It was actually pretty good - brains and all.  I'll post pictures as soon as I get them!

Love to all my other Yale-China fellows!  I miss you crazy kids being in Hong Kong already!

More reports soon!

xoxo

Jenny