Call me, Miss Maia

My First Week of Teaching

What a whirlwind of a week! I can’t believe it has been more than a week since I left Oregon and I have completed my first week of teaching!

I have already learned a lot and I am definitely noticing the differences between Eastern and Western education which are interesting and eye opening.

Monday was Orientation day, so Tuesday, Jan 8th was my first full day at school. We started the day by going to an assembly for all the secondary students. The primary assembly got canceled for this week. Before we started teaching we were informed that almost everything students do is to prepare for exams. This is true at assemblies even. The start of the assembly was introducing us (we are called Interns at the school), and then we watched a game show style book trivia between students. Another thing that was cool was seeing the group exercises. All students take 10-15 minutes doing stretches and movement two times every day. They follow a video. It was fun to participate. Older students also run laps around the court downstairs during the day as a class break and chant "yi, er, san, si" ("1,2,3,4." I think they do 4 laps?)

I met my mentor teacher, Charlotte on Tuesday too. She is nice and has a sense of humor. I enjoy watching her teach.

After the assembly I met my first 3rd grade class (I teach 2 different classes). The P3B (Primary 3rd grade classroom B) class has 27 students and they are very energetic. One of the girls named Janice started talking to me in the hall before class. She warmed up to me the quickest. She likes to follow me around and give me candy and shoulder massages. Another boy named Lukas knows a ton about the U.S.A. Maybe someday he will visit. He knows the populations of some states, the names, and capitals. He likes to come up to me and list them. After class, 6 students pulled me to the reading corner to read them a story. That made me happy because I just met them. (Note: There aren't strict rules about photo releases here like the U.S. We have permission to share how cute and talented our students are)

My energetic P3B class

After English class I observed the P3B General Studies (science class) where we learned about transportation and the use of wheels. The teacher I co-teach with for GS is Ms. Alice. At this school the students stay in their homeroom class and the teachers come to them for the different subjects.

Twin Day or Athletic Day?

Wednesday I co-lead my first poetry class. Each poetry day we split up and read poems in a grade level’s class. There are about 5 classes for each grade level. We read poems to first graders and it was their first time doing a poetry day. The poetry activity is supposed to help warm up their mouths for speaking English. They glue the poems in a book for safekeeping. I sung the poem to the tune of I'm a Little Teapot. You can teach the poem any way you want to.

Wednesday is also athletic wear day. I like wearing comfy clothes to school. People keep confusing Lois and I or asking if we are twins/sisters everyday. Wearing our matching Nike sweats probably didn’t help that case. Wednesday we got our flight reimbursements and food stipends (finally!!) and the principal, Jane, was confused when Lois went in after me to get her money because she thought it was me coming in again. We get the other half of our food stipend in February.

In English class with P3B we practiced cursive and how to change past to present tense and also worked with verbs. I write in print because my cursive isn’t exactly the format they are learning in and I don’t want to teach them incorrectly.

On Wednesday I also met my other 3rd grade class (P3C). It was the afternoon and they were a lot quieter than P3B. Charlotte says they are generally quieter even in their morning English class. In this class there is a boy who is very shy. Charlotte said not to look at him when he talks. She told me to look away when he whispered and had another girl speak for him at the front of the room. This is something that is different than the US. Apparently this boy has never spoken directly to a teacher since he was enrolled at HKP in Kindergarten.

In Jen's 2nd grade class she told me that one girl just sits there and does nothing but the teacher is okay with it because she has very good grades. That is also different than the State's because normally we would scold or try really hard to make students participate.

For dinner on Wednesday just us roommates (Jen, Lois, Alexis, Rachel, and I) went to get Korean food around the corner at Mengka. It was yummy. Alexis and Rachel accidentally ordered something really big after ordering a too small dish of Bulgogi.

Later that night Jen and I met with Phil and Judy because we were partners for the family night on Friday. Even Phil and Judy mix up Lois and I. During the meeting Judy kept confusing Lois and I’s names and then looks at me and says, “I just want to call you Maia!”. And I look at her quizzically and say, “I am Maia!”. It was funny, but oh my, I wonder if we will ever get called the correct name.

On Thursday was another poetry day but with 2nd graders. Then we had a long English class with P3C where we did the same lesson to catch them up with P3B. Charlotte left me alone with them for most of the second period so she could prepare for her open lesson (where admin comes in and observes her). It was fun to be in the class by myself.

English corner is my job during lunch some days of the week. Not many kids came because it was the first day, but instead, one of the math teachers sat with me wanting to learn English. We had a more detailed conversation using Google Translate. Her English level is probably the same as my Chinese, because we could introduce ourselves. And I could say some basic things like how old I am in Chinese. On Friday I played Uno with various students during English corner. I had to explain what the word Uno meant which is something I've never done.

English Club on the "quarantined" floor

After the main school day, my job is to help with English club with Ms. Ma in P1A. There is a virus going around, especially among the 1st grade floor. On Tuesday there was a first grader who vomited in the hall....I’m glad I found some vitamins to take here. Originally Ms. Ma told me to attend the 3rd grade English Club because they moved it to the 3rd floor to avoid the 1st grade floor (everyone has been avoiding that floor). The 3rd grade English club was playing a game similar to Bingo, “Find someone who…” where they needed to write a person’s name in the box “for someone who has a pet”, etc. It was relieving to be with this class and with another intern, Jen, but then one of the 1st graders came to find me in 3rd grade club to bring me to the 1st grade level to Ms Ma. It was really fun but I was super conscious about what I touched and washed my hands right after.

The first graders are so cute! They are a little crazier. They speak more Chinese than English. But some of them are surprisingly advanced. This is also true for the skill level variance in my 3rd grade classes. For roll call instead of “here”, they say 2 English words they know. Then we played a game where we passed balls in a circle and when the music stopped the person with a ball had to say a drink name. One boy said “beer!” They learned drinks last week. It was cute because we told them to make one circle around the classroom, and instead they made multiple circles, holding hands with their friends. Making a circle with little ones takes quite some time. The next activity was drawing a vending machine with drinks and labeling the drinks. Ms Ma says in the following weeks we can divide the class by English level so we can challenge the skilled students and she can speak Chinese and English with those who need more help.

At 5:10PM Phil met all 5 interns at HKP with a driver to take us to the main school in Macau for the evening activities for high schoolers. My activity was breathing exercises. It went well. We did five rotations and were there until 9PM or later. Overall, the high schoolers didn’t seem that excited about coming to the event. I was surprised to see that my 3rd graders were more advanced at English than the high schoolers. Later I asked a teacher about this and she said it’s because they have less native English speakers at the main school.

On Fridays it is casual day. That means we don’t have to wear white shirts and black pants. But we still need to dress business casual. I used my free periods in the morning to call mom and Gena in the sound proof piano rooms. Then I had library service where our jobs as interns is to create end caps (find books and decorate a shelf based on a chosen theme) and lexile books (look up books and label based on reading level). I love the Chinese New Year colored book shelf theme currently. There are also other familiar books on the shelf!

Box Knives and 3rd Graders?

In my back to back English classes with P3C and then P3B we introduced a big project that students are going to work on for the next week or so. This project is combined with their GS class. They are going to build a mini house for GS and the English portion is writing about it, making a drawing with labels, a materials list, and presenting their project in the end. I lead the instructions in P3B so Charlotte could meet with students individually who were in trouble about their cursive writing homework. I think the level of this project is a little advanced for most of the students, but we will see how it turns out! One boy told me he wants to make a glass house, but they have to be able to build this in class. So I asked him if he can cut and build with glass by himself and he says no. Duncan is one of my advanced students and he impressed me with his drawing of his house. Future architect?

Charlotte says kids can bring box knives to school so they can cut cardboard in class next week. They need to bring all materials from home. I’m nervous about the box knives… I was surprised that they could bring a knife to school too… as third graders. We will definitely talk about safety tomorrow!

After school I got dinner at the cheap but soo yummy noodles and dumpling place downstairs. Then we all went back to school for the family night. My activity with Jen was positive self talk. It was more successful than the high school night but not many people came to the overall event.

One of my students named Prince mixed up Lois and I when we were greeting them at Family night, but then he found me, and he and his mom gave me a gift! It was a bag of cherry tomatoes. They were super sweet and yummy. They were also very large, so they must have been home grown. Prince is a big helper in the classroom.

Charlotte joked with Prince saying he hasn’t given her a gift yet. It is customary to present teachers with a gift. Us interns even brought gifts for our mentor teachers. I got Charlotte a notebook, a pin from Made in Oregon, and an OSU pen.

After family night it was nice to go home and go to bed! Yesterday we went to Hong Kong! I will write about that in another post though.

Random, but at school we have a tuk shop with snacks and other things. For lunch I have been ordering a meatball noodle soup bowl for less than $3usd. Noe tried the beef tongue noodle soup and said it was pretty good. Lois has ordered the one with egg and also the ham and cheese toasties. I have a pretty solid weekly schedule which I included in my previous post.

Pretty soon we will be practicing for the school's Chinese New Year celebration dinner (students and staff). All the English teachers have to sing "A Million Dreams" from the Greatest Showman, but P!nk's version.

Here are some random extra notes about my school and the education structure here:

• Going to HKP is a lottery based system. The school is government funded. Students apply before Kindergarten. They are selected based on an interview too. Once enrolled, they typically stay all the way through high school. HKP is expanding from 10th to up to 12th grade.

• Students can't take the elevators unless helping a teacher

• Many of the students are trilingual (Cantonese at home, and learning Mandarin and English at school)

• Some of the school was damaged during the typhoon earlier this year but now it is fixed

• There is a mural of a poem on the wall by one of the entrances. Students learn to write this poem because it consists of the majority of the Chinese characters. They learn to write and about being a good person (the topic of the poem)

• Since teachers rotate to classrooms when their period starts, students are left alone in rooms in between periods. There is staff hall duty, to watch for safety reasons, but in the classrooms kids go bananas when class is over. They can even run around the room as long as they don't break anything or hurt each other.

• Students stand up when talking in class

• When a teacher enters they stand up and say "Good morning/afternoon Miss____" then wait till we say "you may be seated"

• Students have to ask to reenter the room. For example, if a kid leaves to the toilet and returns they say "May I come in Miss Maia?"

• All students address a teacher as Miss ___. I call Charlotte Miss Charlotte in front of students. It is a sign of respect.

• When the period bell rings students take out their vocab words and chant/recite/spell as a whole class while waiting for their teacher to come. "Sail Sail S-a-i-l Sail. Environment Environment E-n-v-i-r-o-n-m-e-n-t Environment.

• I talked to a teacher about spelling and she says they struggle with spelling because unlike the U.S., phonics isn't prioritized. So students can spell from memory (their chants) but cannot sound out a word. This also means their vocabulary is pretty large, but they usually can't remember how to spell words. I helped a student spell something with the letter H by making the "H" sound. But that clue went right over their head. Some teachers are working on phonics but some admins discourage it saying it is a waste of time.

• The period bells are pretty chimes of familiar tunes (i.e Beethoven). The students are very good at following the bells and going where they are supposed to be by themselves, even as young as 2nd grade.

• Every day students do group exercises to a video

• Public scolding/embarrassment is normal in the classroom. Teachers will ask students to stand and then be yelled at. Comparing students to each other is also normalized here. Even thought hey hold high standards and are tougher on the kids, they really are some of the happiest, motivated, and disciplined kids I've met.