Chapters 56-58 - No. 19 High School

Chapter 56

Teaching At The Number Nineteen High School

(September 2010-July 2013)

The second time I was in Luoyang was at the Number Nineteen High School on Tang Gong Xi Lu where I worked with Mary Cardinez from the Philippines. She had been in Luoyang a couple of years before me. She worked at a nurse’s school the first year and the Number Two Foreign Language School her second year. She was twenty-five years old. She is a very nice caring person. She was really good with her teaching.

We would switch our students halfway through the semester. I could use the lessons from the first half for the second half and then work on new lessons for the next semester. We worked together for three years. I think we averaged fifteen classes a week each semester. Seems like we had fourteen sometimes and sixteen other times. We had each class once a week. We had around thirty students in each class. The students at this school were 10th, 11th and 12th graders. Mary and I had the 10th and 11th graders.

The third year we were there, something different was done. The school started an all girls class. Mary andI each had half of them. This was the first time in Henan Province that this took place. These girls were from a small town. They were from poor families. Henan Province, the school or school district worked together to make it happen. They helped pay for them to live at the school. The girl’s classes were really wonderful. They were so appreciative for being given the chance to go to the school. Mary and I really liked their classes. Those girls worked very hard with all of the different subjects that they took.

During those six years when I left Luoyang and then returned (2004-2010), lots of changes within the schools and what we had to use in the classrooms. Going from blackboards and chalk to having a computer, a projector and screen and a whiteboard with markers to write with. The school gave Mary and I used Lenovo laptops and I also used the one I had brought along so I would look things up on my computer and write them down to use for lessons on the one from the school. It worked out very nice for me. Sometimes I would just do things on the school’s computer and then download pictures, video, songs, whatever. It was so nice to be able to do things like this. So convenient.

I would still spend hours and hours working on lessons because I could do so much more and make them more interesting for the students. Mary taught me how to use PowerPoint. I did just basic things, I wasn’t as good as she was but what I did worked well for my use. It was really nice to be able to do that also. I would make up lessons for the whole semester and then as the start of a new week was coming, I would go through the lesson for the next week and see if I wanted to change anything.

I learned to always have a backup plan. If something didn’t work in the lesson that I was giving or my material was being used up too quickly and I would get done too early in the class, then I would have something to use so I would make it through the class. It sure made things easier instead of trying to come up with something on the spur of the moment in class. I could use things from online like multiple choice or whatever would work so they had to think and hopefully learn something. I would even use cartoon videos like Tom and Jerry. They loved those. Those Tom and Jerry cartoons were the biggest cartoon videos in China. And what was amazing about them is that they are the ones that I used to watch when I was a child. Really something. It got them to laugh and learn.

As hard as those students worked in their classes and how long their days were, I thought that if I could get them to laugh or have lighter classes, something to take the pressure off from other things, then that would be a good thing. So I tried to always have something fun for them or they could talk about something fun.

Chapter 57

Movies for the Students

When Mary was at the Number Two Foreign Language School, she and the other foreign teacher, Gail Chou, an American woman from Texas, would show a movie to their students at the end of each semester before finals. Their purpose in doing that was to let the students have some time to relax before the final exams with the Chinese teachers.

We, as foreign teachers, did not give exams in our classes. We did not have structured lessons with a textbook, we made up our own lessons, so there wasn’t anything for the students to study from. The last two class periods before Mary and I were done, we would show a movie. The movies could not be longer than ninety minutes so we could get through them in two periods.

Mary usually picked out the movies because she kept up to date on those more than I did and what would be good for the students, something light, funny and meaningful. Most of the time they were Disney movies that had just come out, some were animated or both animated and real people in them. We could download movies from a Chinese website. They were in English being they were American movies and they had Chinese subtitles, sometimes both Chinese and English subtitles. That way the students could listen to English and have the subtitles to help them understand.

We would download them and watch them to make sure we could show them and they were decent and not get into any trouble by showing them. I can remember two of them by name, they were The Search for Santa Paws and Rio. The Search for Santa Paws was used at Christmas being it is a Christmas movie. It told about children, an orphanage and Christmas magic. A wonderful Christmas movie. Rio was animated and basically a love story with birds as the characters. Both movies had songs and singing. The students really enjoyed them. I still enjoy watching them from time to time.

Chapter 58

Classrooms at the Number 19 High School

There were 2,000 students at this school, 1,000 stayed in the dorms. Our classrooms were on the sixth floor. Mary and I were across the hall from each other. We had between twenty seven and thirty students.

The classrooms had a projector and screen to show things on. Mary and I were given laptops to use and we would hook them up to the projector and could show our lessons, pictures and videos. There was also a speaker that we hooked up to the computer. These classrooms had a whiteboard to use and markers to write with.

There was a heater/AC unit in our classrooms but it wasn’t enough to heat or cool them. It would help. The unit stood in the corner, it was about five feet tall. When the weather was hot, the AC would cool some. When it was cold, the heater would help some. When the class was over and the students would open the door to leave, it would cool down because the buildings aren't heated. I don’t know if any schools would heat their buildings. Again, it was not as cold there as in La Crosse. I would go to my classroom during the winter about 20-30 minutes before the first class and turn the heater on so it would start warming up.

I would be ok in the classroom because I was standing up moving around but the students went from classroom to classroom and sat on the little chairs. There was a wooden desk and a little four legged chair that you sat on, no back to it. Those chairs may not work for many Americans because our butts have gotten kind of big over the years and it may take two of those little stools to sit on. It was cold sitting there. I have sat on those chairs and it is cold without moving. The floors were cement like in my apartment so they were cold during the winter. There isn’t any insulation. The students were in the classrooms all day and then late in the evenings. I think they are tougher than I am.

Chapter

The Number 19 High School

(August 2010-July 2013)

This school is located on the corner of Tang Gong Xi Lu and Sha Chang Lu. There are 2,000 students. One thousand students stayed in the dorms at school and the other one thousand stayed at home.

This is the gate to the school which is located on Tang Gong Xi Lu. I think all schools have entrance gates. I’ve never seen a school that didn’t. I will also add that entrances to apartment buildings have gates. This is common in China. I think it is a good idea. Students and teachers all have ID’s that they have to carry with them to show incase they are asked to produce them. Both schools and apartment gates have gatekeepers.

This is what you see when you walk through the front gate and enter the school grounds. The building to the left is for classrooms and teacher’s offices. To the right of this picture is another building. Mary and I had our classrooms on the 6th floor. The Principal and Associate Principals had their offices here along with other staff offices.

This is the same building that I talked about in the above picture that is both the teacher’s offices and student’s classrooms.

When you walk through the entrance gate, this building is to the left and is mostly teacher’s offices and the top floor are rooms where some teachers live.

I do not know what that rock formation represents.

This is a track where the students run and play basketball. The yellow building straight ahead is one of the student’s dorms. The first floor is the cafetera. The next picture shows the other dorm to the left of this one.

The yellow building to the right is the dorm I spoke of in the last picture. The students play volleyball here. The building straight ahead is an apartment building outside of the school grounds.

There is a break from classes at 10:05 to 10:30 a.m. These next pictures show the students running. Music is played and they run for about five minutes. The teachers that aren’t with the students also run in a different area on the school grounds. This refreshes both the students and the teachers.

The school gave both Mary and I a used laptop for lessons and it was really nice to be able to hook it up to the projector and show things on the screen at the front of the room. It was also very nice to have a speaker to connect to the computer. It is below the projector and computer.

I had thirty-three desks. Notice the chairs. How would you like to sit on those all day in different classrooms? Not too comfortable. I sat on those from time to time and it would have been nice to have a pad. It was nice to have a wall to lean back on sometimes too.

Behind my desk in the corner was a heater/AC unit. It wasn’t big enough to heat or cool the room but it helped. During the wintertime, between the heater and the body heat from the students it would warm up during the class time but when they would leave and open the door to go out into the hall, it would cool down again because the building wasn’t heated.

These next few pictures are some of my high school students. I am 5 feet 10 inches tall so you can compare some of the students heights and see how tall they were compared to me.