Ahhh! What a difference there is between my little campus and the rest of this university! Most of it wants to shaft me at every turn but my campus is so different. I really think they want me to stay forever. Well, as far as you can think anything in China.
I got to work this morning and was just waiting for the first examinee to come to my office when Janet called me. Are you in your office? Yes. Can you come down to the playground for photos? But I have 20 students to test! Oh pity, they want you to come anyway. How long will it take? About 10 minutes.
During exams I never take the mid-lesson breaks so yes, I could spare 10 minutes but it actually translated into 30 minutes. The photos were graduation photos and this is why I love my little campus - not one student there had I taught but the faculty wanted me there. They try to include me in everything to make me feel part of the team.
Even better, it was so different to Chizhou where the teachers simply turned up for a group photo wearing whatever they had on. Oh no, here the students all had their graduation gowns and mortar boards and get this - so did the teachers! I was taken to the kitting-out station (beneath a basketball hoop) and supplied with my own gown and mortar board! I may even have looked like a proper teacher. Given that I never graduated from any educational institution in my life it felt slightly fraudulent but yes I am a teacher regardless of my lack of a degree and do you know what? I was honoured.
Next week I should be able to post a picture of me looking at my most professorial (or not, I have no idea how the photo Janet had taken made me look) but what a demonstration of how my tiny campus always try to include me in everything from beating bongo drums to dressing me up like that. Really heartwarming and so I am getting over all the shenannigans the main campus is slinging at me. I am now forewarned about the problems for next year, my main problem of late has been the sudden springing of nasty surprises in the wallet region.
So far I have done more than half the exams. Tell a Chinese class implicitly that you want 20 students to come to be tested and no more and never expect exactly 20 to turn up. The chancers will come just to be able to finish a week early and you will end up with 25. I expect it and am not bothered, it will make next week easier.
So far I have failed two boys. I had no choice even if their English level was that of a native. The only time I had seen them was the first class and today. Both went home early on Fridays and never came to my classes. I was surprised they even turned up for testing.
But I have also been passing students I really shouldn’t and certainly wouldn’t if they were English majors. But these are not. The ones who attended every class and volunteered to read from the book only needed 10 marks to pass so they were easy. It was the ones who had missed five or six lessons and not volunteered to read that were the problem.
Now they never needed to take nor asked to be given English lessons so I felt some compassion should be shown. Ok, some have been given the barest minimum pass mark but they were happy with that. There was however one girl whose attendance had been poor and she had never volunteered once on the odd occasion she had turned up. Not only that her English was atrocious.
I said to her that there was no way I could pass her.
Ok I understand she said.
Then she stood up to leave and said “I made this for you, it’s for luck” and pulled from her pocket something she had made from red twine for hanging at home - see picture. She still gave it to me AFTER being told I was failing her.
Ok, call me a softy because you know what happened. Even the lowest pass is a pass!!
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