Yesterday, I discovered that I don’t have any classes this week!
And, that I haven’t since December! This is, I hope, the last surprise in my semester-long venture in figuring out my own schedule.
A long time ago, I got a calendar for my first-semester work schedule. I asked for it early on so that I could see which days I would have work (like, when the semester starts and when it ends) and which days I have off. I got a single page with September, October, November, December, and the beginning of January stacked on top of each other. Some of the days were color-coded for being time off, … or they tried to be. When I got a printed copy in black and white, it was hard to tell. At the bottom of the calendar was a list of the 4 important dates: the beginning of school, the beginning of Spring Festival break, the beginning of 2nd semester, and a note on the exact date of the lunar new year. This left a lot to be figured out or asked about.
Here are some things I have learned or confirmed about the Chinese school schedule:
1) Tests come before the end of the semester (and before break)
When I think about being in school, I remembered having Christmas/New Years break, then coming back to school and having semester finals after not having done anything for a while. These kids have their big break around the Spring Festival towards the end of January. We started the semester on September 1st and ‘finals week’ seemed to be the last week of December – the week after Christmas. It seems that we are back to the usual schedule of classes this week, except I don’t have any. I’m not sure if this is some special feature of the end of semester, or if my contract says I don’t teach after December or something… I haven’t checked. Not even Ms. Xu was clear about it. We both had to ask 王老师 if I was supposed to be teaching anything this week.
At first, I had thought that the kids would just be done with school after ‘finals week’ at the end of December. Then, I came back after New Years to find there were still kids coming to school! Oh well, it’s not the first time I’ve been surprised to see kids going about their normal school day. I knew I had to be at work, but I thought we’d all just be … planning and strategizing for the next semester or something. The week after New Years was a short week, and I was told that the kids had some other special tests and activities, thus no regular English class. I busied myself trying to package up my materials for the year. Then this week arrived and … lo and behold, still more kids! 王老师 told me that the kids had a regular school week, but that the new semester had not yet started. Apparently I did not have a regular school week as I discovered that I had no Kindergarten classes, no after-school classes, no classes at all!
2) Sometimes, weekends are rescheduled.
This is actually kind of nice since it is an easy way of putting vacation time in larger chunks. I first encountered this after ‘Golden Week‘, the National Holiday in celebration of the founding of the PRC in the beginning of October. Beginning on Saturday (which was Oct 1st), everyone got 7 whole days of pure vacation. These seven days expire, of course, after Friday, and then people go back to work. “But, after Friday comes Saturday,” you point out, “so they wouldn’t go back to work yet.” Oh, yes they do! I had been told I should come back to the office on Saturday and Sunday, and I understood this was meant to ‘make up’ for the vacation. However, I sort of expected that it would be like a teacher in-service day. Maybe do some lesson-planning in anticipation of the coming week.
Nope! I was in for a surprise when I walked over to the office and saw the kids streaming in as usual! Not just the teachers, but every child knows that every child in China must go to school on Saturday and Sunday after Golden Week – it sounded kind of like their nationalistic duty as children of China when I overheard a teacher saying it. I forget our daily schedule, but I think that Saturday and Sunday were actually ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Thursday’ for class purposes. However, in the Kindergarten, I think they had chosen different days of the week to make up for. I don’t remember exactly what, but the Elementary School and the Kindergarten never make up the same days at the same time!
I was a bit lost for a few days regarding what ‘day’ of the week it was.
This happened again for New Years (Jan 1st). In this case, I thought it was a relatively convenient way to make sure that people had the option of sleeping in on January 2nd as well. Jan 1st fell on a Sunday, so we had Monday and Tuesday off. We paid for our Tuesday by working on the Saturday (Dec 31st) before January 1st.
3) New Years and Christmas are both celebrated, but only New Years gets time off
When I say ‘New Years’ here, I mean the January 1st New Years (元旦 yuan2dan4), not the Chinese lunar new year (Spring Festival – 春节 chun1jie2), and when I say ‘celebrated’, I mean in the sense that people see it as a day to do something.
Religion of any sort is pretty out-of-the-question since everyone has been told from birth that there is no god. People are to some extent aware of the ‘Christmas story,’ as 王老师 told me that she had included a brief description of it when teaching ‘Christmas’ in one of her English lessons. However, Christmas in China is a mostly celebration for stores and for young people. Christmas is a good time here for stores to have promotional events and decorations. ‘Young people’ seem to be co-opting Christmas as a holiday in China, perhaps similarly to how ‘Cinco de Mayo’ is increasingly being ‘celebrated’ in the States. Christmas Eve is a popular evening to go to dinner with friends or family – as was demonstrated by the traffic when, on the way to Guanqian Jie to meet her parents for dinner – 王老师 bemoaned being stuck in the busiest area of town on the busiest day of the year. Christmas this year was on a weekend anyway, but I don’t think it would have gotten time off if it wasn’t – though I guess I’m not sure.
I already mentioned that time off of work is granted surrounding New Years. New Year’s eve is a popular day for celebrations of some sort, including events like the one I went to at Hanshan temple. I’m not sure if drinking is as large of a part of New Years in China as it is in the States, but I was assured that drunk driving early in the morning of the new year is absolutely not a problem here because the drunk driving laws are so strict. I don’t know exactly what these laws are.
Halloween and Thanksgiving seem to be similar excuses for decorations and sales. Here at school, Thanksgiving was celebrated with KFC-style chicken sandwiches for dinner. I missed it though because Kraytul and I went out for dinner!
Holidays that actually get time off are: Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day / Golden Week, New Years, Spring Festival. The kind of family-gathering that people do in the States for Christmas is comparable to the gathering that people in China do for the Spring Festival and for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
4) Teachers will be back before the end of Spring Break vacation
Although the schedule-calendar I got puts the day of the new semester on Feb 6th, the teachers will be back before then. I think some have intermittent ‘on duty’ days on campus, but all will come back a few days before the new semester to get started on planning. I’m not sure if there is an actual pre-determined day for this, or if they just don’t know what it is yet. I have been told that it is fine for me to return from break on the first day of the new semester, but then again, I am just the 外教 (wai4jiao4 – foreign teacher)
I don’t know the schedule for next semester yet 🙂
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