Teaching the Teachers
In addition to the university and high school students in our program, we have a class of 12 English teachers from Jishou. Leslie runs the class, and our main goal is to teach these English teachers some new classroom techniques. One of the most common things we get as teachers is "Your teaching style is so different from our Chinese English teachers." Our teaching styles are generally more relaxed, and we try to emphasize creativity and energy in our classrooms. From my experience, Chinese English teachers are more serious and use a lot of silent reading activities. Teaching reading is difficult in any language and in any country, and Leslie invited me to do a lesson with the teacher class about teaching reading passages. The passages themselves are pretty boring, and Chinese students must practice reading these passages in preparation for the array of standardized tests they face before graduation. To be honest, I had a lot of difficulty coming up with a creative way to teach the lesson, so I thought of teachers I had in elementary school. I ended up using a simple activity called "buzz reading." I had the teachers read the passage out loud, and they would say "BUZZ" and pass the reading to another classmate. In this activity, people who aren't following along end up looking pretty foolish when they get buzzed, so its a good way to get people to pay attention. After the lesson, we talked a little bit about my teaching techniques, and the teachers responded really well to the buzz reading. One teacher said she usually just had the students read the passage silently, and she thought buzz reading would be a good way for her to get the students speaking and to get everyone involved.
And so, a thank you to Mrs. Zacchei, my 6th grade teacher who used buzz reading in my class. Your technique got me through a tough lesson today, and I'm sure it will make the lives of a lot of Chinese students a little more interesting while they suffer through reading passages.