First Day of Class

Well, it is official, I have taught my first college course. Class started at 16:00 or 4PM for the all us that are not on a 24 hour clock. Before I even got to class, I was hot and sweaty and had a sweat mark on my shoulder from my bag, that was holding my laptop and teaching supplies. It was hot and humid today, I am talking Augustana College Graduation day, hot and humid-which is actually fairly normal for Wuhan-so needless to say after my twenty minute walk across campus, I was a little sweaty. Luckily, I am very paranoid about being late to anything and everything. This paranoia allowed some time for me to cool off and also find out that, my classroom was locked. Talk about a minor heart attack. Having the door to your class locked and you are suppose to start in ten minutes is a frightening feeling. Thankfully my co-teacher arrived after I called her in a state of panic and was able to get it open for me.

Once I finally got myself set up in the classroom, I plugged in my external hard-drive and was preparing to set up my power point presentation, for my students about my life back home. However, my external hard-drive, it turns out is not compatible with the Windows 2000 operating system. The presentation I had prepared to last the entire first period had to be scratched, because of technical difficulties. When the bell rang for class to start I only had 13 of 16 students in the room, and I began to get their English names, so I could replace their Chinese character names-which I could not read- on my attendance sheet. A few stragglers walk into class as I am discussing my first rule of class: arrive on time. That irony was not lost on me and I did have a nice little laugh to myself about it. As I was explaining the second of my class-limit cellphone use to zero, and if it rings you sing a song-several of my students were texting away. I had to make it very clear that I would not allow excessive cellphone usage, and if that occurred I would take their phone for the class period.

I finally get around to telling the students about myself and I tell them that my presentation would not work on the computer in class. One girl asks if I can use my laptop, and I set it up on my laptop and have my students gather around my laptop. Immediately the students are talking about all my pretty friends-primarily the photos I included of myself and different girls that I am friends with-and I tell them all that I will let my friends know how pretty they think they are. The picture of my dog Bailey was a big hit. But nothing got their attention as much as my pictures from the concerts I have been too. They all seemed very interested in going to concerts and also seemed very confused about the concept of tailgating up at Alpine Valley for DMB shows. They were also very impressed that I met a rock star-back in 2009 I met Jason Isbell of Jason Isbell and 400 Unit, I never said he was a rock star but they assumed he was. In one of my slides I had a picture of the always lovely Grace Potter, and tried to explain to my students that she is my celebrity crush. It failed miserably and that concept was completely lost on them.

After the slide show of photos from back home, I explained to my students that I would be preparing them over the next 17 weeks, for the Oral Interview of the IELTS (International English Language Testing System). I told the class that we will be breaking the interview process down into three parts and work on each part for several weeks at a time before we put it all together and attempting the real thing. I had each student introduce themselves to me and the class, which was like pulling teeth to get a volunteer. Ultimately, I just went around and stood in front of each one of them and pretended I was hard of hearing until the entire class could hear them. Many of them did very well and I expect that some will do very good. Others have studied English for years only in written form and have limited to no experience in any type of oral classroom. Overall, I am really excited that I have started teaching and that I have this class every Tuesday, along with a listening class on Wednesdays. Until the freshman get done with military training this will be my only two classes and I am keeping my fingers crossed that these students will be well prepared for the IELTS and pass it.

Below is a picture of me on my first day of school