Brilliant English

The Brilliant English Program is a specialty of Wujiang Pearl School. I know, because I am creating it.

Just before the recent National Holiday, 王老师 asked if I would design a cover for the special program binders that Brilliant English students would get. I don’t think I have a copy of my original design, since I gave it to 王老师. She needed a design fairly quickly, and I am a little slow at computer-generating art (and I thought my Inkscape was broken). So, I sketched a design inspired by the sort of chest-swelling accomplishment that I imagined a ‘Brilliant’ English program ought to achieve, on the understanding that the concept would be turned over to someone else who would use it to make the actual final cover design. My concept design included a title hastily written in Italic calligraphy, credit to the school, and an earth with a gloriously beaming sun rising up out of the east. Lacing the bottom edge were a banner made of flags of English-speaking countries, to symbolize international connections.

Getting to know you

Yes, like the song from The King and I

Yesterday, instead of hurrying off to whatever task or errand or document-checking or lesson preparations I usually tended to after lunch, I wandered through the sunny courtyard area between buildings where the kids play during post-lunch recess. Chinese kids have to get pretty serious pretty fast in school, so they don’t have much free play time. The time they do have is probably precious.

Feedback please? Phrases for Kindergarten Teachers

A question for all of you:
The kindergarten teachers here want to make a list of English phrases to use with the children, I assume for the purpose of creating some English learning environment. The children don’t have to learn to say the phrases, but they should learn to follow directions. We’re talking about things like “Please go back to your seat”, “Be careful”, etc – the kids don’t need to say or use them, but they should understand what is meant. And, when I say kindergarten, this includes 3-, 4-, and 5- year old preschoolers who aren’t actually in kindergarten yet.

First Things First: Breakfast

Ok, I have some catching up to do.  I’m into my third week of being the Foreign Teacher (外教) for the Suzhou Experimental Elementary School at their brand-new Wujiang Pearl Elementary School (and Preschool/Kindergarten) branch, and I’ve only just gotten around to establishing some kind of web-presence.  More explaining and flashbacks later – I figured I’d start y’all off with the same thing I start myself off with each day: Breakfast.

School breakfast: boiled egg, congee (rice porridge), pickled somethings, and two cute little mantou.

Yep, every day that I go to work, that’s what I eat. It never changes. I rather like it. The bowl of white stuff is plain congee. Congee is rice porridge/gruel. Kind of like watery oatmeal, except with rice instead of oatmeal. It’s not just rice in water – the watery part is smooth and has some substance from the starch of the rice. It’s a good cushion food for my stomach to hit first thing in the morning. It always comes with a hard boiled egg, and some pickled somethings. I usually mix both of these into my congee (after peeling the egg) to give it some more flavor. Finally, the dessert of my breakfast, there are the two adorable little mantou. They are just little rice dough rolls. They taste a teeny bit sweet, but I’m not sure yet if they have sugar added (probably) or if I just happen to think that rice dough tastes a little sweet. Anyway, this is what I eat every single morning that I go to work. Ok, I guess there is one thing that may vary. Sometimes one of my little mantou has … I think a sweet lotus paste … inside. Surprise :3 !

mmm... lotus paste...

Although, if you look at a filled mantou and an unfilled one, you can see that one is a little rounder.

Breakfast is served while the kids and teachers roll in between 07:30 and ~07:55, so every day I make sure that I’m at least moving around by the time the pleasant music comes on over the intercom system. Then the dorm bells ring, I imagine driving the boarding kids out of their rooms and propelling them towards the classroom buildings. I haven’t actually witnessed this yet, though. I live in one of the four large buildings on the brand-new primary school campus. I live on the 5th floor, and I think that one of the staff people also lives there, but I haven’t seen them yet. The boarding students live on the 2nd floor of the same building. Not all of the students live at the school. A large percentage are retrieved by their family every day and delivered again in the morning. Also, even the boarding students go home for weekends.

Today is Friday, the last day of my third week here. The students go home early on Fridays. Tonight’s activity will probably be to forage for food downtown because with the students gone for the weekend, the school won’t be serving dinner. But, dinner and lunch and school and downtown and all those other things will have to wait for later posts. This one’s just supposed to get us started.