When I'm not off sight seeing, I'm at the school teaching. The schedule here at Shanghai No. 2 Middle School is much different than ours at home. The students have 9 classes everyday, each class is 40 minutes long and there is a 10 minute break in between every class. The schedule doesn't rotate like the NHS schedule, but it does change. Every Monday the students have the same set of classes and every Tuesday they have the same classes but in a different order than Monday, and so on and so forth. Unlike home, the students stay in the same classroom everyday while the teachers move around to the different classes. Each class has 40+ students and they sit in rows (4 rows of 2) facing the chalkboard - yes, chalkboard. I do remember when I had a chalk board in my classroom back in the old building of Needham High School and I do not miss all the chalk dust or the fact that it gets all over your hands when your writing. Anyway, when I enter the room the students clap and say together 'Lao Shi Hao,' or hello teacher.
The hardest part for me is figuring out what I can teach in 40 minutes, as I only see each class once a week, so its hard to do a lesson that carries over from class to class, as they would have to remember what we were doing a week ago. So I have had to come up with short one class period lessons.
The first week I along with the Needham students explained the school in Needham, the schedule, the classes, the homework load, and they in turn asked the NHS students many questions about school and being a kid in Needham.
The second week I put together a breif powerpoint on a quick look at our area in relation to the country and brief history of the Boston area (Mayflower, Tea Party, Paul Revere) to explain some of the historical significance of the area we live in. This was not so fun for me as this is not my are of expertise. I do know all this information as it is drilled into your head as a student but I definatly had to google some stuff to refresh my memory!
So the third week, I went to art. I did some right brain exercises with them, which turned out to be really hard fo them, these students are like real life Vulcans, they are totally logical, left brain thinkers. But they enjoyed it none the less.
This week I am going with the Exquisite Corpse lesson. I've taught it two days so far and the kids really enjoy this. The students here don't do any art. They do have an art teacher here though. Art is an elective and is only offered Tuesday afternoons for two periods, and I've only seen 8 students choose to take this out of the 1200 here.
The hardest part for me is figuring out what I can teach in 40 minutes, as I only see each class once a week, so its hard to do a lesson that carries over from class to class, as they would have to remember what we were doing a week ago. So I have had to come up with short one class period lessons.
The first week I along with the Needham students explained the school in Needham, the schedule, the classes, the homework load, and they in turn asked the NHS students many questions about school and being a kid in Needham.
The second week I put together a breif powerpoint on a quick look at our area in relation to the country and brief history of the Boston area (Mayflower, Tea Party, Paul Revere) to explain some of the historical significance of the area we live in. This was not so fun for me as this is not my are of expertise. I do know all this information as it is drilled into your head as a student but I definatly had to google some stuff to refresh my memory!
So the third week, I went to art. I did some right brain exercises with them, which turned out to be really hard fo them, these students are like real life Vulcans, they are totally logical, left brain thinkers. But they enjoyed it none the less.
This week I am going with the Exquisite Corpse lesson. I've taught it two days so far and the kids really enjoy this. The students here don't do any art. They do have an art teacher here though. Art is an elective and is only offered Tuesday afternoons for two periods, and I've only seen 8 students choose to take this out of the 1200 here.
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