Bilingual Educator in China

I am being employed to work as a Math teacher in a bilingual school with focus in preparing for their IGCSE.

 

 26^th of March

Exactly been a week since I penned down in my blog. I have spent with the students for about a month or less.

Some of my key observations that I have made and small little touches that I am using to engage the students.

1. Routine – Students need to have a routine. Routine is very important when setting the tone of the classroom. This is so important when it comes to the initial contact and communication with the Chinese students
2. Teacher’s Expectation- Teachers need to set the right and reasonable expectations for the students.  For the higher-abilities student, the expectations of a teacher is to stretch their potential. For lower-abilities students, building up self-esteem and confidence for the subject not only for themselves but they are concerned how they will look if they ask the wrong questions or questions that do not make sense at all.
3. Engagement: Students need to be engaged in a fun yet competitive way.  I will explain more of this engagement.
4. Engagement comes in different forms (teacher-to -student) or (student-to-teacher), (teacher-to-teacher) and (teacher-to-parent) and of course (student-teacher-parent). In this context, as a subject teacher in the school, I will discuss in details of the first and second forms of engagement.

For Teacher-to-student, this is like a traditional approach. When the teacher goes into the class.

Under this condition, I will discuss about Blended Learning.

There are 3 types of models under this Blended Learning

1. Flipped Classroom

For Flipped Classroom, students are being told to read up the chapter ahead of what the teachers will teach and then during the lessons, through the engagement with the students, the teacher will facilitate the discussion to further enhance their knowledge and competency in the chapter.

For instance, students are grouped in groups of 3 to 4 students each and are tasked to complete a pre-assigned question before the lessons and then during the lesson, students will be picked by the teacher to present the answer to the whole class.

Key is to pick the weakest student in the group, this rule can vary in different classroom scenarios. With such a parameter in placed, the higher-abilities students will guide the lower-abilities students in their learning.

When the students stand in front of the students, students will learn to be more confident and they will make sure they really understand the concepts before standing in front of the students.

 Lab-Based Model

Students are being divided into groups. As the word Lab-Based, it means practical approach towards learning. During class, students are being given the actual task related to the chapters and in this approach, peer-learning is more suitable rather than group discussion

1. In-Class Blending

Different abilities student will gather together and according to the abilities, students are tasked differently. This type of classroom settings though promotes inclusiveness. This approach has pros and cons. Pros is students

Next, is Gamification

Through organising of games, interest is being heightened and students are naturally engaged in the process of learning whether directly or indirectly. One of the most commonly used methodology is to organise the students into groups and use a point system to tabulate the score.

Since there is a weekly quiz, I will award the marks to the winner’s team into their weekly quiz’s score and there is a option for the group to either use the points to add to their weekly quiz or use the points to exchange another student from a different group.

Till date, this game seems to offer excitement and engagement in my daily lessons with them.

Thirdly is Computational Thinking

1. Analysis Thinking
2. Complicated questions: Segmenting into simpler questions
3. Step-by Step Solution
4. Understand the question, eliminate the unnecessary information
5. Understand the relationship between similar questions and related solutions.

Fourthly is Experiential Learning

• Project Based Learning; Real-life situations to evoke interest and the ability to think and apply the related knowledge
• Service-Based Learning; Community Engagement; it can be a very small-scale activity like “ Keep our School Clean” through a small of picking up litter in the school, it reflects learning in all areas, How to be Good Citizen, the motives behind learning, why do they want to learn, how we can integrate learning in schools and what they will face in the future
• Teaching of Uncertainty Competence; Learning to be taking place outside the comfortable zone of the school, tapping into unfamiliar ground and going into comfortable zone by its own discovery. To achieve this, students in the group need to communicate and work together as a team. Reflect and relate back to the society that they will be embarking after graduation

 

To ensure experiential learning works, teachers need to facilitate by scaffolding.

What is Scaffolding?

• To provide support to the students, guidance, and facilitate the level of thinking needed for each level of learning so that students will be guided at each step of the learning.

Fifth is Embodied Learning

It involves gaining of knowledge and the importance of learning towards integrating with society. This is very important to create a personal learning experience. This involves the integration of the physical body, mind as well as the emotional feeling. This is very important towards a holistic learning sphere where students draws learning towards them and not the teachers creating it for them.

Embodied Learning focus on a very important concept. The students realised the important of application. This is more than the usual lesson whereby theory are being taught through a facilitator or through the use of ICT lesson.

Though our brain registers the importance of learning. We must not underestimate that knowledge is not just gained through our exposure to our brains.

 

Situational knowledge requires the exposure to the physical body, the emotional feelings and integration with the society to the holistic learning experience of the students.

This type of learning focus on the student’s ability to think out of the box to exercise their creativity and the ability to express their analytical thinking.

Embodied Learning focus on two nature’s abilities of the students.  Creativity and Expression of knowledge.

 

With the combination of these two important elements, students are able to gain more out of the daily knowledge which has been passed to them through their interactions in class.

Sixth is Multiliteracies and Discussing-Based Learning.

This type of learning, embodied the competency level of different languages learnt, integrating the world politics issues and different cultures of countries. This will in turn build up the student’s life towards their interests in learning, the place they are residing now and affecting their views towards the history of their country. All this place a very important part towards a more meaningful discussion towards their learning.

 

For the above pedagogies to work effectively there are few pointers to bear in mind

1. Educators need to understand the student’s life and interest or where their passion lies
2. Educators need to understand the life of a student, the society which the students live-in and the history of the country which the student resides
3. Educators need to support the students to lay the correct foundation to handle complex issues and reflect about it
4. Allowing foreign language to be taught in classroom and be integrated in the student’s life posed threat but this is a good route for a more diversified learning experience for the students and the educators need to embrace such a change.
5. Educators need to collaborate with the experts to solve the student’s abilities in communication and the obstacles face. At the same time, educators need to constantly upgrade themselves to better equipped themselves to impart new and relevant learning techniques to the students.

 

In summary, beside the above-mentioned six pathways of learning, schools need to adopt three important directions for the students

1. School-based Physical Culture

Emphasis on physical education improves the quality of the students in terms of the enhancement of the physical well-being and the ability to analyse complex issues

1. Arts-Integrated Learning

Combining academic subjects with arts to enhance student’s active participation and to enhance learning at a deeper and more meaningful experience. This will in also prepare students for their creativity, physical abilities to handle sports, confidence level in making a good decision for themselves which hones their decision-making abilities in different types of scenarios

1. Maker Culture

This “Maker Culture” happens mostly in laboratory sessions especially during science practical lessons. They are being exposed to the equipment during science sessions, they are tasked to experiment and create. Under appropriate support and mutual learning from each other to go into in-depth-learning to create a personal interest towards the lesson by themselves.

This is a big shift from the traditional type of learning (rote-learning) towards a learning which embodied daily interaction, emotional and physical contact to enhance their individual learning experience and to gain a deeper connection for themselves.

 Today is the 6^th of April 2019 (Saturday).

It was actually a public holiday yesterday and I could get some rest and recharge after falling really sick on 29^th of March 2019.

It was also my first experience falling sick in a foreign land, where I am not familiar with my usual surroundings where I was being raised and brought up which is Singapore.

I was down with a throat infection, probably due to the harsh cold weather coupled with the strong wind.

In the northern part of China, the wind can get really strong and partly because, it is close to the sea and Dalian is considered very close to the coastal areas.

Strong wind is definitely having its pros and cons. One of the pros is the wind can blow the air pollution away really fast due to the neighbouring provinces having the industrial pollution through air. However, China is such a huge place that one can imagine and just between province to province, they can be miles apart.

Coming back to my medical experience, I was being brought to a clinic known as VITUP Dalian. I was impressed with the medical facilities and the professionalism of the doctors. This is where I was being brought to an attention of the types of billing when the patient has to pay after the medical treatment.

Most of the time, when one purchase the travel insurance to go abroad and if there is medical treatment needed due to an unforeseen circumstance, we have to pay upfront of the treatment however, if we can choose the types of billing after our treatment, it would be better as sometimes the medical treatment can be of a substantial amount.

Henceforth, I would really recommend travellers to any countries to pay a slightly more premium to enjoy the direct billing benefits for a less hassle travelling in the event of a medical treatment.

 

In today’s blog, I would like to mention two of my colleagues and share with you all what are my learning experience as well as to end of today’s blog with my daughter, Rachel scoring full-marks for her English spelling test and she called me over the phone to share with me her happy moments..

 

Let me begin with this colleague, his nickname is Mr Moon. Little did I know that he actually left Dalian 6 years ago and went to the US to teach for 5 years before returning back.

Out of the 6 years, the first year he spend alone and the second year, he brought his only son to the US school to learn English and then now they are back to Dalian and his son is studying at our school. Throughout his six years abroad, his wife did not follow him but visited him and the son during vacations. I was like blown away by the living conditions that people went through just to experience life and stepping out of their comfort zone in pursuit of life.

 

Another colleague is Mr Vincent. Initially he was working in Harbin. 2 years ago, he decided to leave Harbin and went to Dalian to pursue a better living environment and living conditions in Harbin is harsh with minus 40 degree Celsius and yet amazingly, people still survive in such drastic conditions. He came here, found his dream girl, married and now have his newborn baby. As I shared with him of my story and how I came to China, he can also relate to me as he also left his hometown, a place where everything is so familiar to a place where everything is so unfamiliar to him. He encouraged me that life is worthless if we dare not step out of our comfort zone and experience new challenges.

Being a Singaporean for the last 40 years, I have learnt to be very careful in my approach in a lot of things, my way of thinking, my decisions are all so calculated moves. I am driven by fear not to try anything out of Singapore. I am deemed as convinced that everything in Singapore is safe and well-protected.

 

As I stepped out of Singapore, my only constant worry is my family. Since the birth of my two daughters, I have never left them alone in Singapore, be it small family vacations, they are always close to my wife and me. This short phase of life in China marks an important milestone in my life. Dare to be different and dare to step out of my comfort zone. I am not sure what holds ahead of us a family but I am sure this short separation is good and beneficial for us as a family at least for me. I been a pampered boy with a domestic helper helping with the chores and cooking. Now at the very least, I am starting to learn how to be independent and start to learn and appreciate cooking for a survival point of view

 

Yesterday while I was at a shopping mall, I received a call from my elder daughter, Rachel , currently in Primary Two. She called to share with me that her English has obtained full marks and I was delighted and happy that I received a call from her. I asked her what she wanted for obtaining full marks, her first reaction was “ Daddy, I do not want anything and if it is too expensive, I do not want you not to have money” I was very touched when I heard this and almost in tears because this daughter of mine has slowly matured.

While in overseas, I would not imagine this words coming from her to tell me not to spend money. In my heart, i felt more reassured that she is getting on well in her life without me in Singapore.

In May 2019, she would be coming for a week’s trial at my school and I am not sure whether she will like it or get adjusted to the new environment or are we making the right decision to send her over to study in Dalian. To be honest, I just want to say we will take baby steps progressively for any major transition to be introduced to the family.

Secondly, I would like to personally thank my wife for coming down to spend her 40^th birthday with me and settling my home though initially I was very reluctant to do that. Nevertheless, just want to thank her for always having my best interests at heart and always inspiring me to do great things in life and believing in me. Thank you so much my dear wife, I will love you.

Before I penned off, I just remembered to share my experience of opening of a bank account in China.

Especially for a foreigner, it is really a hazzle of opening up a bank account in China. This is because of the strict and tight banking regulations. For money to be remitted out of China, it is highly regulated because inflow of funds is preferred rather than outflow. This is very important when the economy wants to expand aggressively and to keep exchange rate favourable to the Chinese dollars. The reason why I want to open a bank account so that I can link my Wechat Pay to this bank account.

Wechat Pay is a daily necessity when it comes to payment because almost everyone uses this for their daily transactions and hardly anyone uses cash these days. I must say that China is the leading country for mobile payment as compared to the rest of the countries I have travelled so far.

In my next blog, I will share more of my experience in their enrichment programmes. The types of enrichment programmes offered and is there a demand for such program offered in China.

Currently for enrichment programmes, though the locals are running the centres, there is still a lack of foreigners coming to teach English. As China opens up her doors to foreign country, the demand for English rose tremendously and its goes for international education. For tier 1 cities, it is more established in terms of international curriculum.

For Dalian, it is a Tier 3 city, the development of international curriculum is still very premature as compared to Tier 1 cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

In May 2019, as scheduled, both my daughter and wife came down and we celebrated my birthday. Though it was a 10 days trip, I felt very happy that they came down to visit me and though sending them off at the airport, I was very reluctant. But I know that it will be the best interest for them to pursue their studies in Singapore. My contract with the school is renewed annually and it would be disastrous and disruptive if the children have to relocate again for their education because of me.

When they were here in Dalian, we enjoyed ourselves at the amusement park at Xinghai Square, played with kites, tried the different types of Chinese cuisines, did a lot of shopping.

Most importantly, both the daughters have a one week of trial learning at the school where I am working currently. The school environment which they had was great for learning Chinese as every student primarily spoke in Chinese. Both Rachel and Lauren had the exposure of learning at my school. Though it was a short five day. They really enjoyed themselves and made friends from China. Both my wife and I visited Etonhouse International ( Dalian) and had an idea what was it like if we were to relocate to Dalian and finding an international school for them is very important. I have even enrolled them for Taekwondo class, Robotics class and fencing class. All these classes are certainly an eye-opener and a good learning experience for both Rachel and Lauren.

We also had the opportunity to fly kite in Xinghai Square and the wind in Dalian is strong. I can remember how both the girls enjoyed so much in kite-flying.

 

It was also right after my family came and left, I started to open up and initiated to meet more friends. The first circle of friends are my colleagues, I had a dinner at my colleague’s place. It was a warm and lovely family and I had dinner with them

 

I also met up with student’s parent and his hospitality towards me really touched my heart. He really showered me gifts, treated me for so many meals with his friends and most importantly, he came down to fetch both of my friends when they came over to Dalian. He brought us around, treated them for a welcome meal and even brought us to a nice restaurant.

By then it was middle of July and time for me to go back to Singapore for my summer vacation. It was the first time that I left Singapore for so long and finally back with a lot of different toys to show to Rachel and Lauren.

It was the beginning of my six weeks holiday in Singapore and the feeling was great. When I was back in Singapore, sorted a lot of things and most importantly is the Indian Visa for both my daughters and it seems that for Caroline and myself, between 40 to 50 years old, we are not required to renew our OCI.  During this trip, we also found that Rusty (our 10-year dog was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease). This is very devasting for us and we knew that this dog is suffering though he is under a lot of medication that forces the heart to pump faster and drawing out water from the lungs. When being treated with so many medicine, we knew in our heart that the kidney will give way one day and rather than for the day to come, we decide to put the dog down because we want him to go in a dignified manner and not suffer and die which is painful for us to watch and we thought of extending his life by giving drugs to him but we just could not bear to see him suffer unnecessarily when the kidney deteriorate.

It was a painful decision, we had to take but for the welfare of our family, we had to let him go. Actually, in July, I could let him go but deep in my heart, when I saw him trying to breathe, I want to help him and actually prolong his life, but time to let go in October when I am back. I do not know what will happen when I am back to China. This is the reason why I decide to end everything when I am back. Sometimes, I wonder myself, if I am going through all these, I would want my wife, Caroline to end my life as well. I want to go in a dignified and winner in life and not a pathetic and a loser to any disease. I also know that life is not perpetual and we just strive to do what is best for others and self.

I am so excited when I am back in Dalian after my summer vacation, meeting my friends and colleagues. This time when I am back, I am more confident to meet more people.

Just nice, in a week time, both my good friends, Etta and Vivien are coming over to Dalian to visit me. It was awesome and they really had a good time, they were welcomed with a dinner and it was a good experience for them.

Today is the 15^th of September and times really flies. I remembered that when I first came, it was 23^rd of February and now 6 months have just flew by and many good things have happened and I could not describe how awesome my experience was in China. All I can say I love China and I want to travel to more parts of China and looking forward to more victories.

By the way, I managed to get an online student for tuition. It happened that this student wants to study in Singapore and currently she is Primary six and studying in Shanghai. I am assisting her for entrance exam in November and prayerfully, she can clear the examinations and successfully be enrolled in a government school in Singapore.

This is my first experience in online tuition, I must say the experience has been good and it was great that I am moving away from traditional tuition whereby I have to travel to the student’s place for effective learning to take place. I attribute the success of online learning has to be the age of the student and the willingness of both the teacher and the student to try something new.

Coincidentally, I also enrolled another student, he is currently in Primary four, and his mother has expressed interests for him to further studies in Singapore and wants me to help him in his preparatory class to ensure his success when he enrolled his entrance exams into Singapore’s local education system.

I am very happy that I have two students onboard and during this coming weekend ( 21^st of September, I will be starting my student enrolment day. I will be giving free bilingual class ( English) as a primary focus and I will translate to Chinese so that students can understand and relate right away. This is actually what is lacking in China education system. Though foreign teachers can teach English, but their inability to translate to Chinese, makes it very difficult for students to relate and understand more effectively as compared to learning from me. This is my biggest strength which is needed in a country like China.