With all the fun of the first few days in Beijing and all the nights out, it was easy to forget that, while this felt like a holiday now, what we'd really come to China to do was teach. To get us prepared for our placements, LoveTEFL and TTC laid on a four day programme of various cultural and teacher training lessons. Sometimes after late nights in Lakers these felt a bit like torture (I'm talking about you 3 hours of mandarin lessons after a big KTV night) but were ultimately super helpful and mean I don't feel quite as terrified as I was before of standing in front of my first class.
After a relaxed first couple days we had two days of cultural training to ease us in to life in China. This meant a mix of some very intensive mandarin lessons, a calligraphy class, tai chi (not nearly as fun or entertaining as we thought it would be) and various cultural talks.
Calligraphy lessons were fun but harder than they looked. Turns out Chinese characters aren't just complicated lines drawn randomly to make a shape, they all have a correct order and precise proportions. The character in the picture is supposed to be 'happiness' and is a character you see everywhere during Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). Each part represents a different element in life that people need to be happy; like companionship, enough food and shelter, and family. I'm pretty sure mine is completely wrong but, hey! It looks pretty!
Mandarin was the most baffling experience, and most enlightening, because the teacher didn't speak any English at all so we got a taste of what it's like to be taught, TEFL style. I'm pretty sure our blank faces were a pretty good representation of what our students faces are going to look like during many of the early lessons! After 6 hours of lessons over two days I feel more confident that learning some mandarin is achievable but, as is often the case with me and languages, 90% of it went in one ear and out the other despite my best efforts to remember! But I'll keep trying and soon enough I'll be able to chat away happily with the locals...believe in the power of optimism!
After cultural teaching (and tour day which I'll talk about at some point) came teacher training, which was intense. Having only done the TEFL course online those two days of face-to-face training were invaluable and very, very long. Our tutor for the two days had a very definite 'TEFL style', think lots of gesture and really. slow. talking. But it was good to get some ideas and put the online theory into some vague semblance of practice. The main problem was that as a group we tended to mess around a lot and so teaching practice was punctuated by a lot of (friendly) heckling. But still practice is practice so hopefully some of it sunk in.
For the duration of the training we were put into groups of 5 which tailed in and out as we lost members to exhaustion and (mainly) hangovers. One of our original group members was an extraordinarily strange gentleman called Alan. Alan permanently looked like he was choosing his next murder victim and taught as if he was in charge of a shooting squad. He told me, dead seriously, that it would be impossible for me to teach well because I couldn't draw well and didn't like technology. He'd never seen me draw, neither had I ever mentioned any strong opinions towards technology. At one point he didnt blink for a full minute and a half. We counted. Safe to say we didnt miss Alan when he defected to another group. But without Alan cramping our style, our practice lesson to the class went pretty smoothly. Fingers crossed my first lesson won't bomb now!
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