Welcome to China....

I really did try my best to start teaching today.

I was scheduled to teach two classes of the long-titled “An Introduction to the Societies and Cultures of English-Speaking Countries”. Each class is roughly two hours long with a 10-minute break in the middle. Tuesday is my heaviest teaching day – relatively speaking.

I got up bright and early and in “professional” mode. I spent much of yesterday preparing and printing a class syllabus and planning my first class. I asked one of the other teachers if the students would understand a syllabus. He told me that it would be a new concept for them, but hey – welcome to North American culture! In university/college, we have outlines of our classes. In my mind, how else can you stay organized? The syllabus is as much for my benefit as my students’.

I arrived at my classroom by 9:35, which was quite early, considering the class didn’t start until 10:00. I didn’t want to be late on my first day as a teacher! I thought perhaps the classroom would be vacant and I could get my blackboard notes written before students started trickling in. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case and I had to wait outside for 15 minutes or so.

Waiting outside the classroom, I considered whether I was nervous. Teaching isn’t something I’ve ever done – period – let alone teach in front of a group of students for whom English is not a first language. I’d been told to expect varying degrees of ability. Some are very good, while others hardly speak a word, even if their professed major is English. I felt some trepidation, but also excitement…. Not unlike how I feel right before I get up to give a speech at Toastmasters. I was ready to use my slight nervousness to spur me on to a better performance.

The first thing I did when I got in the classroom (which is very basic – blackboard and chalk) was set up my laptop. It would probably be completely useless, as the Internet is down today and I’d printed all my notes, but I took it anyway. It’s like my security blanket and reminds me of a time not too long ago when my laptop was my lifeline. At the DFB Group, my laptop went wherever I went. Like the dress pants I was wearing, having it there made me feel more like a professional. I took out the stack of syllabuses (syllabi?) and started writing some notes on the board: About Me, Classroom Rules and Points to Remember (Ask Questions, Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes, etc.). Students started arriving, most of them female, which is what I’d been told to expect. Many of them smiled at me. Some of them started reading my notes out loud. Yeah! I have a precocious class.

Only it wasn’t my class. I finished my notes and shut the classroom doors. One of the students rushed up to me. I thought she might be the class monitor – typically the best student who helps the teacher with the roster and other duties. But she pointed to another woman and said this was the teacher for this class and that it’s not an English class at all. The other teacher didn’t speak any English and didn’t look any older than her students (then again, I probably don’t either, though obviously nobody will mistake me for a student).

For a moment, I was completely mortified. How could I have gotten the classroom wrong? I’d only looked at my schedule about 100 times! I checked it again – no, this was definitely the classroom written on the sheet. What could I do but smile and explain that my schedule most certainly said I was in the right class? The female student explained that these students weren’t English majors. And it just went downhill from there. Hilariously, Bryan, another ESL teacher, showed up and said he was supposed to be teaching in that classroom too. So: Three teachers were all scheduled to teach in the same classroom. Some of the students started giggling, and I smiled back. I called Connie 2, the foreign teachers’ assistant. She left a class to come over and try to figure out the situation. She couldn’t reach Connie 1, and Bryan and I couldn’t reach Teddy… there wasn’t much more that Connie 2 could do, so she returned to her own class.

So I just packed up my things, erased the blackboard, smiled and told the students it was nice to have met them briefly. Some of them smiled at me and one said I should stay in their class and learn Chinese. During orientation week, I’d be told not to get upset at these sorts of things and that they happen all the time in the Chinese educational system. If you get upset, they’re likely to just turn away from you. The Chinese do not like confrontation. Outwardly, I kept my smile and good humour….

Inwardly, I was fuming. It seems like such a simple thing to get a classroom location right. And I was aghast at the thought that somewhere a class was sitting without a teacher. It didn’t help when Bryan said that this had happened last semester too. He’d missed the first class because they gave him the wrong classroom, but his students then acted like it was his fault and made comments about it. We walked over to Teddy’s office. No Teddy. I tried Connie 1 myself and finally reached her at home. She apologized and said she’d look into it. She called me back about 30 minutes later and apologized profusely. She said it was her mistake and that in creating my schedule (based on Bryan’s), she hadn’t changed the weekday or room number. That still doesn’t explain why Bryan was in the same classroom as the Chinese teacher, but I figured it was best for him to talk to Connie herself and figure that out.

Connie explained that neither of my Tuesday classes are actually on Tuesday; they’re tomorrow. She apologized repeatedly and said she’d email me a new schedule (let’s hope the Internet is working by tonight). I was very relieved to find out that there wasn’t a “teacherless” class somewhere on campus.

People make mistakes, I know that. She was extremely apologetic. But apparently this kind of thing happens with astonishing frequency. Oh well…. I have to remember to “go with the flow” while in China. And on the upside, I had a dry run at getting mentally psyched to teach and writing some notes on the board (I have to work on the leftie penmanship, which is not improved at all with chalk… of course, “my” class commented on the left-handedness).

Tomorrow it is. I think this means that I have to teach three classes on Wednesdays. We’ll see. In one instant, I learned that even when you think you know something here - you may not.

Post-Script: I wrote the above in Word since the Internet wasn't working. It is now and I have my new schedule. I'm teaching three classes on Wednesday and two on Thursday. I'll have one class on Tuesdays starting next week.