Lessons Learned: Growing as a Teacher

It is currently my last week of teaching at Jiangxi Blue Sky University here in Nanchang; however, that doesn't really put it into perspective until you realize that tomorrow is my last day. I have come a far way from where I started at last fall, and I am thankful for that. I have to admit, though, that I feel I could make a lot more improvement as a teacher had I another year to make progress. It is hard to picture myself not being here with my students teaching and working on preparing better lessons, assessments, and rubrics.

Unique Opportunities Afforded Teaching English in China:
The opportunity afforded me here in China has been unique for several reasons I believe: First, I have been allowed to experience the ups and downs of teaching in an environment that forced me to deal with my successes and failures. Second, I was allowed to experiment in making and developing lesson plans that constantly challenged me to incorporate different learning styles as well as adjust to my students' needs. Third, I feel that I learned a great deal more about developing assessemnts and rubrics considering my knowledge was rather limited considering I have only taken 1 heavy duty education course before coming. Fourth, I have now taught in an environment in which addressing my students needs was difficult due to language and cultural barriers, but was stretched and learned alternative solutions in soliciting feedback and learning what worked better for them (when I could).

Finals Week: Expecting the Unexpected in China
Our finals week was both planned and unplanned this semester. It was planned in the sense that we had a syllabus and new tentatively when our school planned to hold finals for their students. The part that we forgot about - again - was that we live and work in China and "tentative" really doesn't mean anything. So as we progressed through May most of us anticipated being finished with classes and finals at the beginning of June, but that was not to be...Sitting together in Joelle's room about 2 weeks ago during our HOPE (a time that we spend the whole morning lifting up thoughts and reading the Word) our FAO Billy called and told us to begin giving finals the following week. Honestly, I was rather frustrated and had some choice thoughts in my head which I wanted to communicate with the administration at my school. That, and tell them how completely shortsighted their planning was...

I am glad to say that I never expressed those thoughts, except with my friends and fellow teacher here. Yet, it was a huge blow for many of us since we had built in time with which to say goodbye to our students and make some kind of transition. If you teach overseas, however, I am sure you will learn time and time again that flexibility is the key. Being able to roll-with-the-punches is paramount to being able to live and make difficult transistions as well as overcoming the barrage of challenges to everyday living that now have language and cultural meanings embedded into them that you can't even begin to understand. Nonetheless, we had a job to do regardless of how valid we perceived our grievances to be, and there are just some battles you aren't going to win - this was one of them.

So last week we overhauled our lesson plans and made adjustments to our finals that would fairly guage and acccess our students' progress. Or at least I thought so in the planning stage... I don't know about those of you that teach, but there is a seemingly large gap between theory and practice once application begins in the classroom. How does one account for all the vairous factors that affect implimentation? I have noticed lately that I constantly want to kick myself for not modeling my expectations better, especially when I see it reproduced by my students. I don't know about you, but I had a scary thought: "What does that mean for people parenting kids?" (I don't want to know right now...) At any rate, the point here is that it becomes only all to clear for a teacher in my position to see where bad modeling and poor directions are reflected in informal and formal assessments.