Party in the park

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Connie (Zhu Xiaosha) from the English department asking if I was willing to help out one of her friends who 'needed' a foreign teacher. What this really meant was that someone she knew had a job to offer me, and she had some good points to earn by being a foreign teacher locator. I am always eager to meet a new group of people here, so of course said yes. In the short preparatory meeting, I found out I would be helping out at a party in the park held by an English training institute for their students and parents. The students ranged in age from 5 to 10 (in Chinese age, that's 4-9 by American counting methods). This company provides extra English classes on the weekends for pre-school and early elementary students. When I inquired into their English level, I was given a range of three weeks to over a year of studying. At that point I just wished I hadn't asked. While at the party I was able to find out that a good portion of the teachers are English education majors working part time jobs during college. My duties were to read a poem and plan activities for thirty to forty minutes for the kids, about 25 or so were expected.

I took a taxi to the park and was greeted very warmly by the 25 kids and their parents and some grandparents. The party was in a pretty park pavilion and the weather was cool but pleasant, and there were lots of kite flying families on the fields nearby. Pretty soon after I arrived, my suspicions came true. I had suspected that I was brought there as more of a guest star than as an educational tool, and this was quite true. As these children are pretty young and thus have very little English, they require bilingual teachers, which I am not. In my opinion, I was there more as someone special and to show the parents that they were getting their money's worth, as a real, live native English teacher (aka 'Foreign Expert') was there to help teach the children. I spent most of the time just being introduced to all of the students and repeatedly engaging in an exchange of: 'what is your name?'...'nice to meet you'...'I'm fine, and you?'...'how old are you'. The kids were cuter than buttons, and some of them had a pretty good command of these and a few more basic sentences.

If you think you have a plan for your life, or know that plan, then I can say that I am not in your club. I guarantee (with a stamp) that one year ago I did not think I would be in China guiding 25 kids in rounds of the 'Wheels on the Bus' and 'If You're Happy and You Know It'. But I did. Those two songs, and a game identifying different pictures of food were about the best that I could come up with for activities (considering I had never met the students and did not know their skill level). They stayed pretty involved, and with the teachers help did an impressive job singing. Having no training or experience with early education (unless you count the occasional visit to my mom's first grade classes) I considered it a personal success. I really enjoyed the little party, the kids were just too cute, as their parents would force the incredibly shy youngster to come up and say hello to me. One of the craziest things is that one tiny girl, 'Candy' who looked no older than 4 and as you can tell from the picture, was quite cute, had some of the best English there, I would have told her parents how precocious she was, but I haven't learned that word in Chinese yet. There was only a single negative thing about the party. During some of the other activities, I cringed at hearing some of the teachers leading the students in saying 'sree' and 'sanks' in lieu of 'three' and 'thanks. Now I know that the dreaded inability to pronounce the 'th' sound starts very young. At the end, I almost felt bad receiving the money, as having the opportunity to meet all the eager and friendly kids was payment in itself. I am quite glad that I was free that Saturday to engage in another fun and horizon broadening experience.