China

I traveled to China last summer on a scholarship to exchange best teaching practices with Chinese school teachers.  My team visited schools in Beijing, Xian and Shanghai.  The very first thing that one learns is that every student wants to speak to you in English. By the end of this year, China is predicted to become the largest English speaking country in the world.  All school children take classes in English, but are desperate to practice their speaking skills with a native speaker.  

The second discovery I made was that school children are school children wherever you go in this world.  I shadowed a few male students for the day, and at one point, nature came calling.  In English, I asked the boys to take me to the bathroom.  My three high school guides were more than happy to escort me to the men’s room.  Schools in urban China are mostly seven or eight stories high, so I was not surprised by the long walk and travel between floors.  They brought me to this room that did not look like a men’s room, but who was I to question a cultural difference.  They pointed to the door and told me to go in and I would have some privacy.  I entered the room, and, to my absolute shock, found myself standing in the principal’s office with the principal sitting behind his desk wondering who had just walked into his private space.  Before I could explain myself, I could hear the laughter fade into the stairwells as the boys ran off.  The principal was a proficient English speaker and I did my best to explain that I was lost and apologized for entering his office.  I am not sure if he believed me, but I kindly asked him where the men’s room was.

I think there may be some folklore circulating in our country that Chinese students go to school for twelve hours per day, 365 days a year.  This is simply not true.  Their school day is on average 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, but with a two-hour midday lunch break where many go home for lunch and family chores.  The summer break is around four to five weeks long where the students have enrichment actives, free time and do some studying for exams (Senior year is different because they take the equivalent of the S.A.T in the summer for entrance into university).  The national government does oversee all education and most placements into schools are based on the national exams at the end of every school year.  In all, an American would not be shocked spending a day in a Chinese school.  A student takes all the same basic classes as an American school child.  However, an educator would notice right away is the “drill” technique that is the predominant methodology in the classroom.

We were invited to share our practice of group work and how to engage the student to formulate their own questions.  For years, the system of teacher asking an objective question, student answering and so on, has been the way students prepare for national exams.  Education has recently been undergoing a reform and the Chinese are ready to learn ways to help their students to become more creative and analytical.  In one class, I was teaching a group about pre-Colombian Native American culture.  The students wanted to know the answers before I even posed the questions.  They were not familiar with a teacher asking open-ended questions. When I asked, “What do you think?”  I got blank stares that silently said to me, there is no solution to this question, what does this teacher want me to answer?  By the end of the class, I realized that I had to really push the student to evaluate what I was asking and attempt to formulate a thought that may or may not be correct; or to accept that there was no single correct answer.  By the end of my visit, I witnessed a school system with little to no discipline issues, students excited to learn and kids plotting the next practical joke the would play on me.

Here at City on a Hill, we have been designing our curriculum with a focus on incorporating analytical and evaluative questions for the student to wrestle with.  We want to foster independent learners where asking the questions are as important as knowing the answers.  Our students learn from each other and have the freedom to question the teacher.  What City on a Hill teachers are doing every day is creating a model of teaching and learning that a nation with a population nearing 2 billion is eager to implement in their system of education. 

Patrick Foley is in his sixth year teaching at City on a Hill.  He is the Lead History teacher and mentors both teaching fellows and the CoaHCORPS along with teaching World History. He holds a Masters of Teaching from Simmons, a Masters of Theology and a B.A. from St. John's Seminary and was awarded a Doctorate of Divinity.  He is in his 17th year teaching in the Boston area.