School Days

Two weeks of teaching down for Mr. Mac. That's right, I have adopted my father's teaching name, not just to try and be as sweet of a teacher as he is, but also because my students have a considerable amount of trouble saying McClenahan. So far the name switch is going all right, although many of the students still just say "teacher" or "laoshi"(Chinese for teacher) when they want to get my attention. Oh well, whatever works.

Let's just get one thing straight: junior high students are the same the world over. It seems as though sometimes in the western world, people tend to think of Chinese students as perfect, cookie cutter pupils in red scarves. Not true. Trust me on this one. Chinese 8th graders are just as energetic, funny, disobedient, talkative, and inquisitive as any that you may know where you live. I enjoy watching the dynamics of each class, although I do not enjoy experiencing the dynamics of certain classes which try my patience. :-)

Almost all of my students have given themselves an English name to be known by in class. It is fun and often funny to read the class roster and find that I have Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson, and Shaquille O'Neal all in the same class. Many of the names are ones that you might hear every day, but there's a bunch of other funny ones such as Demon, Moon Sky, Ocean, and even an Albert Einstein. Makes learning the names a little bit easier.

So that's a bit about teaching and stuff. Sometimes it feels like crowd control, but I really do like it. I'll try to post some pictures of students/classrooms one of these days. Until then...