Jinghong High School #1

The majority of the last week of our trip to Yunnan was spent in the town of Jinghong, which is the major city of the famed Xishuangbanna region bordering Thailand.  Our students were guests at the Jinghong High School #1. School in China starts at 730AM and there are five 45-minute classes in the morning and lunch at 1210PM.  Afternoon classes starts at 3PM and goes to 530PM (3 classes) and then NIGHT classes from 7PM to 9PM.  Seriously!!

On this day, it is 94 days to the Gaokao!  

Our students teaching students English language words.  English language education in Chinese schools is AWFUL.  First off, the teachers don't speak English well, and they use Chinese in class.  Students simply repeat words out of a book without any context.  Stories from the text are strange and don't make sense.  Grammar is taught without context.  Students have been taking English for five years and know nothing.  The teachers came up to me and asked how it was our students, after six months, could speak Chinese so well.

Jinghong High School #1 is the best school in the area. Students come from all over and live at school, as you can see by the clothes hanging at the dorm in the background.  Here, students are doing exercises.  I love watching it.  They are SO SO SO not into it!

The school asked us English language speaking teachers to teach a class.  I was assigned to teach Riemann sums.  No big, right?  I can pull that off.

I was asked to teach IN CHINESE!!!  Seriously, I pulled off 45 minutes of teaching (and it was filmed!) in Chinese.  Here are the words that I didn't know (the pinyin of course) on my cheat sheet.  It was amazing, by the time the second half of class rolled by, I was in the zone and didn't even realize I was not using English.  I only had my Chinese colleague help me twice.  Proud moment!!!!