The last few weeks have been quite busy. As term is coming to a close, I have had to prepare for Open Classes. This is where all the parents come in to watch a class. I was finding the whole thing pretty stressful despite the fact that we get advanced warning about the dates. My employer was telling everyone not to worry, the open class is essentially a rehearsed performance where you get to show off what the kids know. The problem was, once I started to rehearse for my open classes I finally realized what a poor grasp of the material many of my students had. It didn’t help that it was with my least well behaved classes, where I spend as much time trying to get them to pay attention as actually teaching. After the last couple rehearsals I was really stressed because the kids were terrible and I thought the Open Class was going to be a disaster. They ended up going ok, with their parents in the room, the kids all behaved and really paid attention. They knew to put on a good show, so it worked out. The whole open class thing is a little strange. Everyone acknowledges that is a staged production and essentially a fake class, but they are still considered very important. The school system is run much more like a business here. Foreign teachers are essentially marketed to the parents and we have to show them that we conduct fun classes where their childern learn to love studying English. That may sound like a negative portrayal of the system, but in fact I think it is quite effective. It ends up creating a situation where their is far more review of teaching and cirriculum quality and far more accountability than back in Canada.
My Chinese is starting to come along. I feel like I am on the cusp of my learning really taking off. I have built up enough vocabulary that I am starting to have some decent (albeit still rather basic) conversations with people. I feel like it is going to start improving quite dramatically very soon. The whole situation of learning Chinese while teaching English was been quite fascinating. It has stimulated a real interest in language that I never really had before. When I told Melissa this, she of course had to remind me of how I had said in high school (maybe in university too) that other languages were stupid and that everyone should just learn English because that’s the only language you need to know. This is what I phone across the world to hear, gotta love it 
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Date: 12/17/2005Views: 547
Last week, I witnessed my first real instance of class conflict here in China. In Shanghai the wealth disparity is greater than anywhere else in the country, although, by all accounts the disparity is increasing across China. What I saw was an altercation between a street sweeper and someone driving a car. The street sweeper started yelling at the motorist when he pulled over near where he was cleaning, saying that he was parking where he needed to clean. Eventually the street sweeper got under the motorist’s skin to the point where he came out of the car and started punching the sweeper. Onlookers came in an broke it up quite quickly. In Shanghai, construction workers, street sweepers, vendors and such are generally migrants from other parts of the country with little education. The wealthy are generally people who were born in Shanghai. As far as I can tell, these groups identify eachother as such and create a sort of division between the two. I never really see richer people chatting with vendors and I frequently have local Shanghainese point out the fact that someone is a migrant and/or warn me to be weary of them. Here basics such as food and clothing are very cheap, but luxury goods like cars and electronics are mostly imported, which gives them price tags roughly equivalent to what they are in the West. So while almost everyone can afford food, clothing and shelter (which can be quite substandard), not everyone can afford a TV, phone, computer, etc. This makes the consumption of consumer goods much more conspicuous and makes relative differences in wealth much more apparent than back home. In general, people here seem to be non-confrontational, but it seems like these divisions are relatively new and causing increasing frictions. I am basing this mostly on personal observation and what I have read in newspapers.
I have about 3 more weeks of school and then I start my vacation! I am going to India from January 17 - February 13, where I will meet up with Mom, John and Baba. I am very excited about this trip, I am looking forward to the second go around in India. P.S. More Pictures!