A Portrait of the Teacher by a Young Student

A student from my underground literature class wrote an article about her experience with my teaching method.  I had been helping the student develop her writing skills so that she could perform well on the GREs as her dream is to go graduate school on edge of the prairie in Garrison Keillor Country — a place I had fond memories of from a journey I took in a former life.  What follows is an article she wrote about my class for a Minneapolis/St. Paul based ezine called China Insight. In the article, she recalls the first day I introduced myself to the class.  Her perspective can be compared with mine as I had written about it too in the post “Back to School.” What follows is an excerpt... Read more

Teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four in Mao Country

Every Wednesday evening six Chinese girls came to my apartment.  By the middle of the Spring 2010 term at Xiangnan University in the home province of Uncle Mao and General Tso, I had come to depend on them to keep me happy.  They were junior English majors and picked English names like Tina, Victoria, Christie, Helen, Cherries, Emilia, and Emma.  Without their attention, kindness, and passion, I surely would have gone crazy as is so much the fate of many foreigners who come to China looking for love or a new life.  But I am getting ahead of myself. It was a dismal cold day in March when I met with the vice dean of the English Department.  A frigid mist blanketed the campus.  The college... Read more

A Day in the Life of a Fake Teacher in the Real China

One day I found myself squealing like a pig in front of children.  I pushed my nose up, grunted, and oinked.  We were playing a simplified version of charades.  It was a Sunday afternoon in the bleak of January.  And this being China, it was bleaker than bleak.  The dean of my university had loaned me out to a private high school as a “favor.” My latest rendition caught the students’ attention.  Girls stopped texting and boys ceased roughhousing long enough to look up and shout “pig!” in unison.  I asked the teacher if they’ve played this game before, adding, “They’re very confident.”  Either the blood of Shakespeare coursed through my veins or the children were very... Read more

Goodbye Year of the Ox

Since I only teach three days a week, and spend most of my time studying, reading, blogging and sheltering from the cold, wintry rain it is easy to forget where I am.  A quick jaunt about the campus quickly reminds me that I’m not in Pennsylvania anymore. Just beyond the dingy metropolis, my university was nestled at the feet of a jagged, tent-like mountain, green with bamboo, shrubbery, and leafy sword blade foliage.  Students roamed the campus in packs on their way to classes, parties, or speeches.  Every day at lunch and dinnertime a campus wide loudspeaker system blares out happy-go-lucky pop music, advertisements and announcements in Chinese as well as English sound bites.  Stray dogs... Read more

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here (So Hot)

“Wow, you ah sooo stro-ooong.”  The tone of his voice turned each of the last two words into something bisyllabic.   The student had been scoping me out.  This is what it feels like to be a zoo animal or a celebrity in America, and just an ordinary foreigner in Chenzhou, China. My job was to be a teacher.  But I was also working off the clock as a professional foreigner. I was in the university gym and recreation center.  It was below freezing outside and Crazy English Mountain was dusted with snow.  There were no heaters in the school, and you could see your breath in the air.  I had been working up a good sweat.  Steam rose up from me.  An exotic mélange of hip hop and... Read more

Teaching British Romanticism in China

I’ve been procrastinating. A recent trip to Montana left me in a swoon. Now it was just a Movable Feast.  But I needed to get back on track and prepare a lecture on American Romanticism & New England Transcendentalism. As I wrote this students were reading excerpts from The Scarlet Letter, The Raven, Song of Myself, &, Moby Dick. Each excerpt consisted of just 4-10 pages because that was all to their anthology. Luckily I was here to remedy the situation with my “traveling library”: 3 Norton anthologies, and several paperback novels. So this unit on Romanticism wrapped up the first half the semester. We started with Thoreau’s “Reading” to frame... Read more

Traditional Chinese Medicine & Elizabethan Theatre

With 16 teaching hours per week and a four day weekend it seemed that I had an abundance of free time.  There were no office hours required, but I provided nine hours during evenings throughout the week for students wanting to talk about literature, culture, or life.  It had to be evenings because the studentry were in classes all day long, day after day.  But despite this I was practically on sabbatical. I had the free time to get literary, practice yoga, explore grimy Chenzhou, and plan my upcoming Tibet expedition.  I contacted the Xiangnan University medicine school faculty to meet with them for a tour of their facilities, and learn about the Chinese health care system.  It would make... Read more

Teaching Thoreau in the Heartland of China

I was teaching Thoreau in a time when the Chinese were migrating from the countryside into the cities. It was a new Industrial Age—but this one was taking place during the age of globalism, cell phones, and Hello Kitty. Experts estimated that a population greater than that of America’s total population would move into Chinese cities within the next 15-20 years.   There I was at the vanguard of this exodus where some of my students had left their families behind in the rice paddies.  These students were their family’s only hope. But for those now living and working in the cities, there was the heady pleasure of shopping. The cities became a Promised Land, and consumerism quietly... Read more

Back to School: Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom!

They were a tough crowd. I introduced my first two literature classes to my concept of learning as a journey. At first their faces were impenetrable masks. Then I told them, “Even in America we know about Chair Mao’s famous Long March, and the founding of the People’s Republic of China.” Their faces lit up with pride. That’s when I knew my students understood me. “So this is an honor for me to be here on the China’s 60th anniversary, and be your guide on another journey. And it is an honor to be part of your education in the beginning of the Chinese Century. Of course, this journey will not be as hard as the Long March, but it will challenge you nonetheless.” It... Read more

The Journey Began

Reality Laid Somewhere Between Daydreams and Nightmares I got out of bed at dawn Wednesday.  It had been restless night spent thinking about all the clever things I would say to make students wonder if I was some reincarnated Confucius in disguise. I had spent the last few days losing track of time in a kaleidoscopic tour of Chinese culture and hospitality. And I had spent the nights of that last disorienting week of summer vacation dealing with nightmares about the first day of class. These nightmares had nothing in common with my daydreams. In them I was continuously lost in labyrinthine hallways, losing my books despite fruitless nightlong search and rescue missions, and showing up in... Read more