Cross-Cultural Confusion?

We are supposed to be modeling American educational methods as we teach at this school. However, this is a little problematic because our group has no clear idea of which American teaching methods in particular we are supposed to be doing, except for thematic units. But our 20 teachers (including some who have not taught before) have a wide range of experiences and ideas about how to teach. There was supposed to be a power point presentation about teaching methods during our short training, which would have been a good overview for us and the Chinese teachers, but we ran out of time to have that discussion.

We run out of time for most discussions, unfortunately, as we race to have a performance at the end of each week. I really want to talk to the Chinese teachers I work with more about what they actually do in Chinese classrooms, because I have no idea what their average class is like, to see if where we really are doing things the same or different. But the only time I get to see them is while I am teaching the class they supervise.

At our camp, classroom management is an issue, and it is totally unclear to me whether the children’s behaviors that I perceive as totally out of control are generally acceptable in Chinese classrooms, or if they are acting out unusually. During lessons, Chinese students will just keep chatting with each other, completely ignoring the teacher, and the Chinese teachers don’t do anything about it. Do they think this behavior is fine, or is it an issue with it being unclear which teacher is supposed to be helping them settle down. Or are the behavior expectations in general unclear? If we stand up to sing a song, many of the children take that as an opportunity to run around the room. I have made a lot of headway in making my expectations clear and training the kids in how to behave in my classroom. But these are second through fourth graders who have been in school before, not Kindergarteners who have not yet had a chance to develop school skills. So are my expectations totally out of line with normal Chinese school expectations, or what?

Here are some extreme examples of some things that have come up this week that would be totally inappropriate in an American school:

In Patti’s class today, they were discussing what it meant to have a talent, and what students to be considered to be their talent. She asked their teacher what his talent was, and he said, “To drink a lot of beer.”

This same teacher arrived at the auditorium with his class for today’s rehearsal and promptly fell asleep. Patti had to wake him up before they left.

Yesterday one of the teachers wore a “Math Sucks” t-shirt to school. When asked, she said she knew what it meant and agreed with it. This was during career week.

A student ran out of the A-level music class this morning. His teacher did not go after him. We all met in the auditorium a few minutes later, where his Chinese teacher told me he went home with his parents. We found him after rehearsal sitting in a classroom by himself.

A student brought a toy gun to school for a prop for career week. You can’t even get a toy gun that looks like an actual gun in most places in the US anymore, but here was a very realistic handgun in a holster. The Chinese staff thought he should keep it in his backpack, if we weren’t going to let him use it for career week, which they thought was strange. The American staff, used to zero tolerance policies about guns, jumped when they saw it

Obviously, China is a different place with different social norms and expectations. But what are they? Sometimes it might be a little different, or sometimes a lot different. When are the Chinese teachers wondering what the heck is up with us?How do we tell the difference between when we are experiencing a little cultural confusion and when something is actually not in the best interest of our students?