At long last, the end is here. After 3.5 years of being at this school, it’s finally time to move on. I taught for one semester in the bilingual section in grade four. After that, in the international section, I followed my kids from grade one through grade three. It’s been great seeing their progression and indulging them in their little quirks. It’s been an eye-opening experience teaching and bonding with these kids here in (the outskirts of) Guangzhou. There are many things that have happened in the last few months, so that is why I’ve waited until now to blog about them.

Over the last few months, we have tried more to encourage the kids to work in groups in order to start to create research skills and present their findings in hopes of building better public speaking skills. Assignments ranged from creating their own superhero to gathering information about an extreme weather disaster and making an emergency plan.

As always, it’s been amusing at times when correcting some of their work. I’ve noticed that kids here really have no boundaries when it comes to saying or writing inappropriate words in English. For anyone who has read one of my previous posts about inappropriate clothing and wacky Chinglish sayings, this will come as no surprise.

After all, it’s not surprising that they don’t think anything of this when you see some of the things like this at the mall.

During afternoon snack time, the kids are always given some kind of fruit, and they are usually pretty good at eating whatever it is. However, the moment that there is an opportunity to have some sort of celebration or class party, that’s when all the terrible junk food rains down upon us. If you think some kids in the west eat crappy food (and they certainly do), then these Chinese kids can rival them for sure.

These apples were no match for the smorgasbord of crap that infested the classroom during the “Children’s Day” celebration.

Then again, they are kids, and we all know that whenever there are treats around, no healthy food stands a chance, even if it’s sweet fruit.

It’s important that the kids here have a chance to be kids. It’s a very odd and unfortunate mish-mash of forces that they are subjected to here in China. On the one hand, because of the overpopulation and ramping up of the survivalist mentality after Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the young population is at the mercy of extreme pressure from all members of their family and society to do well. This pressure has resulted in all kinds of situations, such as cheating on tests, parents “gifting” their kid’s teacher to make sure they receive more attention, and instituting evening classes for kids as young as grade one, not to mention the cultural norm of parents sending their kids to training centers in the evenings and weekends to continue practicing their English or other school subjects.

As a result of this, I’ve noticed that this generation of parents in particular seems to have a real hard time disciplining their kids. I’ve heard comments about parents worrying about their kids not liking them as they get older and therefore trying to overcompensate for it by not really enforcing any real discipline and spoiling them rotten. If you are a teacher working in a private school, this can be particularly troublesome as private schools tend to worry only about getting the parents’ money and therefore not doing anything to help teachers out with alternative teaching resources or discipline procedures and just pass the kids on up each grade, even if they don’t demonstrate understanding of the learning standards.

However, of all the grade three classes, I feel lucky to have gotten the kids in my class. Other teachers have commented on the fact that the kids in my class seem rather well-behaved. This is comforting since there is one third-grade class that is notorious for being quite unruly and difficult to manage. In fact, after my creative writing demo class in March received rave reviews, the head of the English department decided to use my class for her recorded demo class for a teaching competition that she was entered into (I have no idea if this was voluntary or not). I never did find out the results of that. When I first heard about it, I wasn’t thrilled. Then, when my co-teacher told me that our kids would have to do that same demo class again (because apparently it wasn’t quite good enough), I was even more upset.

Anyway, luckily, my kids have had their moments to be wacky, hyper, and explore their own weirdness without much interruption.

In other news, in June, there was a period of about three days or so of continual heavy rain due to a tropical storm that was passing through. This kind of weather is normal for this area at this time of year. However, three days in a row of this, combined with the lousy drainage system that China is filled with, created a lot of flooding throughout the city. It resulted in tragedy and damage. My coworker, while on his motorbike, accidentally went over a pothole of sorts without being able to see it, tumbled off his bike, and had to call out for the rest of the day to get treated.

Yes, on the left side, there is a dead body floating in the water after they somehow made contact with the electrical unit on the corner.

Luckily though, the rainstorm also created some rather funny moments.

On a final note, teachers and students have all carried classroom supplies into the new building that the international section will use starting next year. The rooms seem decent, but as always, it was fun to discover a few “oopsies” along the way.

Once again, the idea of privacy when using the bathroom was not a factor when building the bathrooms here. Apparently no one thought to check the spelling on these school classroom placards either (they are mispelled like this all over the school). Aside from the name of the school being in all lower case letters, I’m pretty sure that the word “phoenix” contains an ‘e’ and not a ‘c.” It’s nice to be able to leave here with a little smile or smirk on my face.

Lastly, as much as I’m glad to no longer have to put up with ridiculous lack of communication, unprofessionalism, and general disorganization, I will miss seeing my little ducklings.

My co-teacher bought more junk food to give them in the afternoon today, and since the new building doesn’t have any Wi-Fi set up for us to use the computer for anything, this seemed like a good way to kill time. I had also bought some treats of my own. When I came in, I could see that they had already eaten her snacks, but I didn’t let that stop me from dispensing my own. They had a back-to-back helping of junk food, and I was culpable. But it was the last regular day and the first day in the new classroom, so I didn’t care.

One of my kids got an award for being a top performer in a national English competition.

My co-teacher had this saved from a few months earlier.

Apparently many students asked for leave soon after the exams (one even missed their English exam, but he’ll be transferring schools). All together, eight students were absent today.

Some lovely thank-yous and goodbye items for me.

One duckling in particular wrote me a really sweet note.

Later, I received a drawing and a handmade goodbye card from another student in the shape of a heart. It was really sweet.

I admit that I feel anxious and nervous about starting all over again in a new city and a new school, but I hope that everything that I have done and learned will help me move forward. So, here’s to the next chapter in my adventure book.