Introduction
After graduation, I will be furthering my leadership abilities as a Peace Corps Secondary Education Teacher in China. My learning within and beyond the classroom at Carolina has prepared me to assume my new role as an educator, motivator, source of inspiration, and driver of change in Chinese classrooms. I plan on incorporating my learning from each of my Key Insights and out of the classroom experiences in helping me design and implement an English curriculum that will improve English education in underserved Chinese schools.
Some studies estimate that as many as 100,000 English teachers are currently needed in China. China has become the world’s largest market for English language study, as ESL students are getting younger and ever-increasing proportions of the population are studying English. Foreign language is one of the three mandatory subjects tested on China’s college entrance examination, the gaokao, and English is usually the language tested. Performance on the gaokao is essentially the sole determinant of where a student will be admitted to university. Public schools have shifted their English education instruction to begin at age nine rather than age twelve, and some schools in China’s larger cities start English education at age six. Wealthy parents in large cities will spend inordinate sums of their income on private language classes for their children, which has led to the rise in the private market of English classes for preschoolers, the hiring of foreign teachers, and the growth of private ESL companies in China.
After having the opportunity to teach English at several types of different schools, I realized that there has undoubtedly been an increase in the demand for qualified English teachers to improve the quality of English curriculum and education at various kinds of schools in China. However, this growth has been extremely uneven, with the private schools and public schools in the huge industrialized cities on China’s eastern coast reaping the most advantages. There is a huge inequity in terms of the schools, and thus the students, that have been able to benefit from increased resources in English education. My experience teaching English as a Kindergarten teacher at a private primary school in Nantong, located in one of China’s wealthiest provinces known for its high education spending and subsequently high education performance, was vastly different than my experience teaching English at a school for the children of migrant workers in Shanghai. At Zhenxing School and HLH1, many of the class sizes exceeded 50 children in a small, cramped classroom. The textbook used to teach the students was extremely basic and did not foster conversational skills. The lessons were all focused on basic memorization, and did not engage students across multiple different skill levels and experiences. Many of the teachers did not even speak English fluently themselves.
Through this experience, I realized that there is a true need in China for native English speakers to serve at underfunded and understaffed schools both in large cities like Shanghai and underdeveloped areas in Western China. Native English speakers are needed to develop English curriculums, to set an example for English education standards, and to train current teachers in English education and lesson planning. Through the Peace Corps program, I will volunteer as an English teacher in a university or vocational school that typically would be unable to afford the high salary of a paid English teacher. I will be educating the next generation of China’s English teachers: students who are studying to teach English at elementary, middle, and high schools across Western China. Through this opportunity, I want to help solve the issue of the need to strengthen English education to help level the playing field for all of China’s English learning students. I will primarily do this by introducing and implementing a teaching method which is unlike traditional Chinese classroom methods that focus on memorization and strict discipline: I will foster personalized connections with my students, I will emphasize hands-on, experiential learning opportunities, and I will employ various kinds of assessments to combat China’s test-centered culture. I believe these solutions are sustainable and will allow me to educate a group of future teachers. They will in turn be able to provide their future students with a strong, unique English education that will help them to succeed on the gaokao, but also in their future education and careers.
Recommendations and Implementation
As a Secondary English Education Teacher for the Peace Corps, it will be my responsibility to design an English curriculum, focused on fostering growth in conversational skills, and implement this curriculum in several classrooms. I will be given the responsibility and the support to make this curriculum my own and implement significant changes.
Step One: Foster individual connections
In my SCHC 330 class, we learned the importance of building connections with people in difficult situations to rise above relying on stereotypes, prejudices, and other forms of judgment in forming impressions of people. This learning was also reinforced in my experience helping homeless mothers sell sweet potatoes in Taipei. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I will be working with groups of students who may come from underprivileged backgrounds. As I have learned in my experiences at South Carolina and studying abroad, the best way to work with these students and help them group will be to form as many individualized relationships and connections as possible, so that if students do come from different backgrounds or are experiencing difficult situations, I will be able to support them as much as possible.
In my experience volunteering at underfunded, underserved schools in China, the teachers find it almost impossible to foster individualized connections with more than a select number of students, as there are an overwhelming number of students in every class and students are not always engaged in English lessons. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I will begin by making sure I learn every student’s name in each one of my classes. I will begin each teaching period by helping my students choose English names, and by having students introduce themselves. Over the initial weeks of class, I will monitor the students’ performance in classroom discussions and activities, and I will develop a consciousness of which students need extra attention or slower instruction. I will always make sure to adjust the paces of my lessons accordingly so that no student is left behind.
I will also utilize outside opportunities to develop relationships and bonds with my students. I will have consistent office hours, which I will encourage students to come to if they ever have questions, or if they just want to get to know me better. I will open a limited amount of “meal” office hours, in which I will invite students who are struggling in the classroom to have lunch or dinner with me on the weekdays and weekends, in an effort to help them practice their English in a more relaxed, one on one setting, and to get a better idea of their specific situation. I also plan on inviting students to explore my future city with me, to help me find my way around, and to share their hobbies and passions with me. I want to become a consistent, available presence that students can turn to for advice, support, English practice, and friendship.
Overall, by setting a strong example and showing that I care about each student and their learning potential, I will instill similar values in each one of my students. I will encourage these students to treat their future students in the same way, which will help create better and more inclusive learning environments for generations of students to come.
Step Two: Offer unique, hands-on, experiential learning opportunities
In my experience teaching English at several schools for the children of migrant workers, I noticed that the English classes taught by Chinese teachers in these under-resourced schools were extremely rigid and tightly controlled. These teachers taught their entire lessons directly out of the robotic conversations from the textbooks, rarely gave their students opportunities to engage and speak English in interesting classroom activities or amongst themselves, and struggled to make the lessons relatable to students.
To combat these issues, I will create lesson plans that are interactive and experiential, to inspire students to participate and improve their conversation skills, and to encourage them to think outside of the box in their own future lesson planning. I plan on incorporating debates, discussions, music, humorous videos, current events, and more into my everyday classes. I want to plan experiential, problem-solving activities, in which students are given the task to solve a real-world puzzle or problem and must work in groups to devise a solution, all while communicating and working in English. I will have projects in which students work in groups to give presentations, to plan class sections and lectures, and more.
Part of my role as a Volunteer is also implementing an out of the classroom project to provide further service and enrichment to the community, while also continuing my work in developing community English skills. Based on my learning about the connections people feel to their food that I gained in SCHC 337 and in my experience working as a volunteer at Fanpu Nongchang, I would like to start a community garden project. This would give students a chance to feel closer to and more respectful of the earth, and also would allow them to develop their creativity and development skills by designing their own garden projects and making their designs come to life. It would also be a great way to bring English learning to a unique, out of the classroom setting. Overall, I will make it my top priority to keep students actively engaged in our classroom activities and guiding the direction of our learning. I hope this unique strategy will encourage students to experiment with similar strategies in their future classrooms, and will enhance how they teach language in the context of China’s educational culture.
China’s traditional educational culture is incredibly strict, focused on students’ memorization skills, and centered around tests and assessments. These methods are extremely successful in encouraging students to work industriously, especially in preparing themselves for examinations. However, I truly feel this is limited, as students do not always develop creativity and problem solving skills, both of which are essential in learning to communicate in a new language. Just like learning in new atmospheres as a study abroad student challenged my learning of my traditional cultural beliefs, like freedom and patriotism, in POLI 391 and SCHC 334, I want to teach students in a way that will expose them to new viewpoints and methods, and will encourage them to keep a more open-mind in their future classrooms.
Step Three: Develop creative forms of assessments to combat China’s test-oriented educational culture
The gaokao is immensely important to students in China. However, the extreme stress placed upon the importance of the gaokao, in conjunction with the long history of the imperial examination system amongst elites and scholars, has fostered a test-centered culture in Chinese schools that persists to this day. Students focus an intense amount of effort on preparing for exams and testing well, especially on the gaokao, and neglect other learning enrichment opportunities. I do not believe this test-centered culture lends itself well to quality language education. Although I want to help my students succeed on their future English language examinations and equip them with ways to help their own students in the future reach more success on the language portions of the gaokao, I also want to show them that experiential, communicative classroom methods can prepare students for these tests, and more, in a richer way than some of China's traditional methods. I want to encourage them to promote various kinds of assessments in their own classrooms, to find different ways to measure students’ learning abilities and encourage students to work industriously throughout every class, not just in preparation for the exam.
In order to challenge my students’ previous test-oriented education, I will try my hardest to eliminate written examinations from my English classes. Instead, I will use more alternate forms of assessment of students’ speaking and conversational abilities, including debates, oral presentations, speeches, and more. I will incorporate sections of examinations to measure my students growth and strengths in traditionally neglected regards, such as creativity, confidence speaking English, and collaboration. Similar to the other steps I will take, I hope my students will model their future teaching strategies and methodologies after my own assessments and behaviors.
Evaluation
At the end of every semester, I will utilize student opinions to continue shaping my courses in a way that is most helpful building the students conversational and teaching skills. I will evaluate whether or not students feel that I made myself available after class, whether or not they felt the classroom activities were engaging and creative, and whether or not they felt the assessments were an accurate judge of their English proficiency. I will also survey students to see whether or not they intend on adopting any of my methods into their own future teaching plans. Based on the results of my surveys and evaluations, I will continue to adjust my courses in a way that responds to student feedback and concerns. Ultimately, I want my courses to help instill students with confidence and passion, introduce them to new methods, and incite their curiosity with material they find relevant and engaging.
After graduation, I will be furthering my leadership abilities as a Peace Corps Secondary Education Teacher in China. My learning within and beyond the classroom at Carolina has prepared me to assume my new role as an educator, motivator, source of inspiration, and driver of change in Chinese classrooms. I plan on incorporating my learning from each of my Key Insights and out of the classroom experiences in helping me design and implement an English curriculum that will improve English education in underserved Chinese schools.
Some studies estimate that as many as 100,000 English teachers are currently needed in China. China has become the world’s largest market for English language study, as ESL students are getting younger and ever-increasing proportions of the population are studying English. Foreign language is one of the three mandatory subjects tested on China’s college entrance examination, the gaokao, and English is usually the language tested. Performance on the gaokao is essentially the sole determinant of where a student will be admitted to university. Public schools have shifted their English education instruction to begin at age nine rather than age twelve, and some schools in China’s larger cities start English education at age six. Wealthy parents in large cities will spend inordinate sums of their income on private language classes for their children, which has led to the rise in the private market of English classes for preschoolers, the hiring of foreign teachers, and the growth of private ESL companies in China.
After having the opportunity to teach English at several types of different schools, I realized that there has undoubtedly been an increase in the demand for qualified English teachers to improve the quality of English curriculum and education at various kinds of schools in China. However, this growth has been extremely uneven, with the private schools and public schools in the huge industrialized cities on China’s eastern coast reaping the most advantages. There is a huge inequity in terms of the schools, and thus the students, that have been able to benefit from increased resources in English education. My experience teaching English as a Kindergarten teacher at a private primary school in Nantong, located in one of China’s wealthiest provinces known for its high education spending and subsequently high education performance, was vastly different than my experience teaching English at a school for the children of migrant workers in Shanghai. At Zhenxing School and HLH1, many of the class sizes exceeded 50 children in a small, cramped classroom. The textbook used to teach the students was extremely basic and did not foster conversational skills. The lessons were all focused on basic memorization, and did not engage students across multiple different skill levels and experiences. Many of the teachers did not even speak English fluently themselves.
Through this experience, I realized that there is a true need in China for native English speakers to serve at underfunded and understaffed schools both in large cities like Shanghai and underdeveloped areas in Western China. Native English speakers are needed to develop English curriculums, to set an example for English education standards, and to train current teachers in English education and lesson planning. Through the Peace Corps program, I will volunteer as an English teacher in a university or vocational school that typically would be unable to afford the high salary of a paid English teacher. I will be educating the next generation of China’s English teachers: students who are studying to teach English at elementary, middle, and high schools across Western China. Through this opportunity, I want to help solve the issue of the need to strengthen English education to help level the playing field for all of China’s English learning students. I will primarily do this by introducing and implementing a teaching method which is unlike traditional Chinese classroom methods that focus on memorization and strict discipline: I will foster personalized connections with my students, I will emphasize hands-on, experiential learning opportunities, and I will employ various kinds of assessments to combat China’s test-centered culture. I believe these solutions are sustainable and will allow me to educate a group of future teachers. They will in turn be able to provide their future students with a strong, unique English education that will help them to succeed on the gaokao, but also in their future education and careers.
Recommendations and Implementation
As a Secondary English Education Teacher for the Peace Corps, it will be my responsibility to design an English curriculum, focused on fostering growth in conversational skills, and implement this curriculum in several classrooms. I will be given the responsibility and the support to make this curriculum my own and implement significant changes.
Step One: Foster individual connections
In my SCHC 330 class, we learned the importance of building connections with people in difficult situations to rise above relying on stereotypes, prejudices, and other forms of judgment in forming impressions of people. This learning was also reinforced in my experience helping homeless mothers sell sweet potatoes in Taipei. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I will be working with groups of students who may come from underprivileged backgrounds. As I have learned in my experiences at South Carolina and studying abroad, the best way to work with these students and help them group will be to form as many individualized relationships and connections as possible, so that if students do come from different backgrounds or are experiencing difficult situations, I will be able to support them as much as possible.
In my experience volunteering at underfunded, underserved schools in China, the teachers find it almost impossible to foster individualized connections with more than a select number of students, as there are an overwhelming number of students in every class and students are not always engaged in English lessons. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I will begin by making sure I learn every student’s name in each one of my classes. I will begin each teaching period by helping my students choose English names, and by having students introduce themselves. Over the initial weeks of class, I will monitor the students’ performance in classroom discussions and activities, and I will develop a consciousness of which students need extra attention or slower instruction. I will always make sure to adjust the paces of my lessons accordingly so that no student is left behind.
I will also utilize outside opportunities to develop relationships and bonds with my students. I will have consistent office hours, which I will encourage students to come to if they ever have questions, or if they just want to get to know me better. I will open a limited amount of “meal” office hours, in which I will invite students who are struggling in the classroom to have lunch or dinner with me on the weekdays and weekends, in an effort to help them practice their English in a more relaxed, one on one setting, and to get a better idea of their specific situation. I also plan on inviting students to explore my future city with me, to help me find my way around, and to share their hobbies and passions with me. I want to become a consistent, available presence that students can turn to for advice, support, English practice, and friendship.
Overall, by setting a strong example and showing that I care about each student and their learning potential, I will instill similar values in each one of my students. I will encourage these students to treat their future students in the same way, which will help create better and more inclusive learning environments for generations of students to come.
Step Two: Offer unique, hands-on, experiential learning opportunities
In my experience teaching English at several schools for the children of migrant workers, I noticed that the English classes taught by Chinese teachers in these under-resourced schools were extremely rigid and tightly controlled. These teachers taught their entire lessons directly out of the robotic conversations from the textbooks, rarely gave their students opportunities to engage and speak English in interesting classroom activities or amongst themselves, and struggled to make the lessons relatable to students.
To combat these issues, I will create lesson plans that are interactive and experiential, to inspire students to participate and improve their conversation skills, and to encourage them to think outside of the box in their own future lesson planning. I plan on incorporating debates, discussions, music, humorous videos, current events, and more into my everyday classes. I want to plan experiential, problem-solving activities, in which students are given the task to solve a real-world puzzle or problem and must work in groups to devise a solution, all while communicating and working in English. I will have projects in which students work in groups to give presentations, to plan class sections and lectures, and more.
Part of my role as a Volunteer is also implementing an out of the classroom project to provide further service and enrichment to the community, while also continuing my work in developing community English skills. Based on my learning about the connections people feel to their food that I gained in SCHC 337 and in my experience working as a volunteer at Fanpu Nongchang, I would like to start a community garden project. This would give students a chance to feel closer to and more respectful of the earth, and also would allow them to develop their creativity and development skills by designing their own garden projects and making their designs come to life. It would also be a great way to bring English learning to a unique, out of the classroom setting. Overall, I will make it my top priority to keep students actively engaged in our classroom activities and guiding the direction of our learning. I hope this unique strategy will encourage students to experiment with similar strategies in their future classrooms, and will enhance how they teach language in the context of China’s educational culture.
China’s traditional educational culture is incredibly strict, focused on students’ memorization skills, and centered around tests and assessments. These methods are extremely successful in encouraging students to work industriously, especially in preparing themselves for examinations. However, I truly feel this is limited, as students do not always develop creativity and problem solving skills, both of which are essential in learning to communicate in a new language. Just like learning in new atmospheres as a study abroad student challenged my learning of my traditional cultural beliefs, like freedom and patriotism, in POLI 391 and SCHC 334, I want to teach students in a way that will expose them to new viewpoints and methods, and will encourage them to keep a more open-mind in their future classrooms.
Step Three: Develop creative forms of assessments to combat China’s test-oriented educational culture
The gaokao is immensely important to students in China. However, the extreme stress placed upon the importance of the gaokao, in conjunction with the long history of the imperial examination system amongst elites and scholars, has fostered a test-centered culture in Chinese schools that persists to this day. Students focus an intense amount of effort on preparing for exams and testing well, especially on the gaokao, and neglect other learning enrichment opportunities. I do not believe this test-centered culture lends itself well to quality language education. Although I want to help my students succeed on their future English language examinations and equip them with ways to help their own students in the future reach more success on the language portions of the gaokao, I also want to show them that experiential, communicative classroom methods can prepare students for these tests, and more, in a richer way than some of China's traditional methods. I want to encourage them to promote various kinds of assessments in their own classrooms, to find different ways to measure students’ learning abilities and encourage students to work industriously throughout every class, not just in preparation for the exam.
In order to challenge my students’ previous test-oriented education, I will try my hardest to eliminate written examinations from my English classes. Instead, I will use more alternate forms of assessment of students’ speaking and conversational abilities, including debates, oral presentations, speeches, and more. I will incorporate sections of examinations to measure my students growth and strengths in traditionally neglected regards, such as creativity, confidence speaking English, and collaboration. Similar to the other steps I will take, I hope my students will model their future teaching strategies and methodologies after my own assessments and behaviors.
Evaluation
At the end of every semester, I will utilize student opinions to continue shaping my courses in a way that is most helpful building the students conversational and teaching skills. I will evaluate whether or not students feel that I made myself available after class, whether or not they felt the classroom activities were engaging and creative, and whether or not they felt the assessments were an accurate judge of their English proficiency. I will also survey students to see whether or not they intend on adopting any of my methods into their own future teaching plans. Based on the results of my surveys and evaluations, I will continue to adjust my courses in a way that responds to student feedback and concerns. Ultimately, I want my courses to help instill students with confidence and passion, introduce them to new methods, and incite their curiosity with material they find relevant and engaging.