As my first semester teaching in China comes to close, I can't help but look back and think: Did my students learn ANYTHING? One of the biggest struggles I have encountered during my first few years as a teacher is trying to answer this question. I suppose it would be make more sense to phrase the question as "What did they learn?" as they had to have learned SOMETHING, even if that something is merely my name.
As difficult as it was for me to gauge student learning in the States, it feels at least ten times more difficult to assess it in an entirely different system of education. Yikes. What have I gotten myself into? I am already thinking about next semester. What should I do differently? And by this question I am referring to essentially every aspect of the classroom (topics/content, delivery, activities, behavior, expectations, and on, and on.) It never ends. And trying to answer these questions in China is really hard. I look to other PCVs and foreign teachers, only to realize that everyone who is teaching here is really just doing whatever they think is best, and every Spoken English class varies greatly. Classrooms lead by foreigners entirely determined by the individual and singular desires of the teacher.
Wouldn't you like to be a Chinese student?
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