Doctor Bethune was a stalwart Canadian who moved to China ages ago, lived here, worked here, died here, and was practically sainted.  Everyone who’s anyone who talks to my Canadian colleague, Janice, asks if she knows of Dr. Bethune.  Of course, she does, being a Sino-loving Canadian.

Mrs. Liu is one of the English Department leaders here.  Commonly known as the “teacher in charge of the students’ lives”, she’s somewhere between a counselor and good-intentioned watch-dog.  She knows everything that’s going on in the English Department.  Everything.

Last semester Mrs. Liu and Janice got to know each other a bit, through various circumstances, aided by the fact that Mrs. Liu was generally more available and approachable than the department dean, which makes sense.  Mrs. Liu happened to be trying an experiment to help the kids whose English is a little lower than average in the sophomore class, and she asked if Janice would help.  They pooled their ideas and ran with them, Janice spending a good deal of quality time with those students.  This prompted Mrs. Liu to really like Janice and how she was teaching.  She wrote up a little article on Janice for the school paper (no, we didn’t know at the time that they had one…and have still yet to actually see one ourselves).  Janice read the article and was mortified – they practically sainted her, making a “Norma Bethune” out of her.

Add to this general good feeling between Mrs. Liu and Janice the fact that Janice has organized a Newsletter club for any interested students, teaching them how to hold meetings, take minutes, plan a newsletter, etc., and she can do no wrong in Mrs. Liu’s eyes.  Janice’s two nicknames among us teachers are now, and evermore shall be, “Norma Bethune” and “Saint Janice”.

During vacation, I ruminated long and hard on how to teach my classes with the best possible results.  I came up with the plans I have already detailed in previous Xangas, and already altered slightly to fit reality.  One of those plans was the Clubs.  I’ve got three clubs:  The Advanced Club, The Glee Club, and The Drama Club.  The Advanced Club started last week.  I winged a speech about how the club would operate, why I felt it was important, and why the 20-some-odd dedicated students who showed up could expect to put in a lot of work each week.  Then I introduced the first week’s reading: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.  A four-page poem.  Perfect for weeding out the not quite that dedicated students, or those who really don’t have time for the class.  This club meets Wednesdays at 7:00pm in the Freshman Oral Classroom, otherwise known as the Cold Classroom.  This week’s meeting went pretty well.  I managed to get them talking a fair amount, but not as much as I’d like.  We’ll have to continue to work on that.  We discussed the poem and at the end they got their next reading assignment: The Tell-Tale Heart.  They cheered that it wasn’t poetry.  Which means I’ll give them another poem later.  :)

The Glee Club had its first meeting tonight.  I was afraid I’d have upwards of a hundred kids, but I only had fifty-eight.  That’s not too bad.  They all fit nicely into five rows of ten and nine.  Shortest people up front, of course.  I had five guys, so I put them on the end of each row.  At fifty-eight, the group’s really more a choir than a Glee Club, but who cares?  I like the name.  Anyway, I stood on a chair in front of the room so they could all see me easily, after I got them in their rows looking between pairs of people.  I taught them how to stand properly for singing, got them to loosen up a bit, took them through some warm-ups, tried to get them to sing instead of belt.  Belting is all very fine and good (and fun), but first I want them to learn to sing as a choir, which required listening, which makes belting rather impractical.  Then I passed out the lyrics to My Favorite Things, which I had started teaching to three of my classes last week.  We went through it some, and I had select rows sing the first verse while the others were quiet.  Then I split them into three sections and gave each section a note to sing (thirds).  We practiced a bit and then I started combining sections so that they could hear themselves singing harmony.  We had some attacks of the giggles and some losing of the pitch, but all in all it went pretty well, and they improved noticeably even in that short period of time.

A few kids stayed behind to help me fix up the room – we moved the desks out, shoved the red carpety-thing in a closet, stuck the broken TV on top of the closet and got all the garbage out.  It’s now a perfectly adequate space for my clubs and for film screenings.  I’m excessively excited, though I know my diction does not reflect my feelings at present.  Or perhaps it does – I’m apparently feeling rather British.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the drama club.  If it’s also a reasonable amount of people, I will be happy.  If it’s not a reasonable amount of people, I will have to audition them.  Gah.

I told the students during the first week about the clubs, and although it has taken a few weeks to get them all up and running, their enthusiasm has not waned.  I guess they’ve all been talking about it, because the other day Mrs. Liu asked one of my students to get the details of the clubs from me.  I wasn’t sure if it was to make sure I wasn’t doing subversive stuff, or just idle curiosity, but it turns out Mrs. Liu was writing some report on the English Department and just wanted the basics:  Club name, meeting time and place, number of students, content and purpose.  I gave the relevant information to my student, who gave it to Mrs. Liu.  Today, Mrs. Liu was going on and on about it to Janice.  Apparently I’ve been sainted in her eyes now, too.  She kept marveling at how much we were both doing.

At the beginning of the year, I had said at one point to Candis, our Foreign Affairs Office liason, that we came here to teach, and that was what we were putting our efforts into.  This was important because last year’s teachers didn’t do much compared to us, and I think the school was expecting that again.  We were trying to differentiate ourselves to help them understand why we were making certain requests and (polite) demands.  As Mrs. Liu marveled at our dedication, Janice repeated my words.  We came here to teach, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.  We’re working hard, not unlike Mrs. Liu herself.  To which Mrs. Liu replied that she and the others were doing what they should, but we’re doing what we should and more!

Anyway, the response of the students in the clubs is reward in itself – they’re so excited, and they’re actually on-task – it’s amazing – and focused and not bored the whole time, listening avidly when they should and participating enthusiastically when they should, especially in the choir.  It is, however, nice to know that at least someone with the school administration sees what we’re doing as recognizes it as going it little above and beyond.  If I wasn’t making other plans, I think I’d probably come back for a second year.  And I get a kick out of the fact that I’ve finagled myself into being not just an oral English teacher, but a choir and drama teacher as well!  Gah!  :)  Back home I’d be woefully unqualified for all three, but I’ve got just enough training in all three to (I hope) really do these kids here some good.

So, if any of you are interested in global community service, forget the Peace Corps – come be a strong, adventurous, dedicated teacher in Baicheng, China next year – they’re looking for people to replace us, and the kids certainly need someone who really cares about them.