Teaching in China

Last summer I spent two weeks in China on a study tour through the Global Educators Cohort at Michigan State. We spent two weeks traveling between three different cities going into classrooms and observing. Throughout the week we were given the opportunity to teach two lessons. One of my lessons was an English lesson and an art lesson combined. Myself along with another MSU students created a lesson on the artist Vincent van Gogh. The students were in elementary school so they were in their first couple years of being introduced to the English language. We had a translator but for the most part the lesson had to be taught in all English.

            Knowing that the students were not yet fluent in the English language we had to incorporate a lot of visuals into our lesson, which was not too difficult because it was an art lesson. We created a PowerPoint with some history of van Gogh and all of his accomplishments. The bullet points in the PowerPoint were all very short and used words that we knew the students would be able to understand. However, the majority of the PowerPoint included pictures of van Gogh’s paintings. We finished the PowerPoint by showing them his famous picture of a sunflower. We then instructed the students that we were all going to draw our own interpretation of van Gogh’s painting. Using the chalkboard we gave the students instructions then demonstrated how to do what we were instructing. To close up our lesson we picked a couple students to show their artwork to the class, and we asked them to explain their drawing to the class. We allowed the students to present their drawings using their first language because we wanted them to feel confident and comfortable in front of the classroom.

            For the most part our lesson went really well, I think the visuals really added a lot to the lesson and made it easier for the students to comprehend what we were talking about. Also, I really thought demonstrating what the students needed to be drawing made it easier for the students to be aware of what they should be doing while learning vocabulary for colors. One area that we could have improved on was teaching more than just the vocabulary for colors. Our lesson didn’t focus on much vocabulary aside from the colors that we introduced to the class. I think it was harder to teach a lot of vocabulary because it was a classroom that we were new to and we were unaware of their level of English proficiency.

            My favorite part of my teaching experience in China came after we taught out lesson. The teacher gave us a change to walk around the classroom so the students could practice their English with us. We would approach each student and let him or her strike up a conversation with us. It was very important for us to use very simple vocabulary and make the sentences short enough where they would be able to translate them. Their proficiency in English varied depending on how much they worked on their English at home. Overall my experience in the classroom was really enriching and is an additional experience that will help me to be a better ESL teacher in the future.