• Teaching

    Getting Settled in the City of Perpetual Gloom

    A  green-eyed monster was here.  I knew it when another foreign teacher complimented Sarah, a post-doc student assigned to help me transition to life in one of China’s largest cities, the City of Perpetual Gloom.  To me, the green-eyed monster was a minotaur which shook its head furiously and threw its horns to either side.  They were big horns too.  The kind that would pierce, rip, and crush if they ever connected with your heart. “Wow, your English is very good,” the other teacher said.  Ingratiation oozed from his pores. He was one of those nice guys.  He reminded me of myself, actually.  Maybe that’s why I wanted to smack…

  • Teaching

    A Portrait of the Teacher by a Young Student

    A student from my underground literature class wrote an article about her experience with my teaching method.  I had been helping the student develop her writing skills so that she could perform well on the GREs as her dream is to go to graduate school on edge of the prairie in Garrison Keillor Country — a place I had fond memories of from a journey I took in a former life.  What follows is an article she wrote about my class for a Minneapolis/St. Paul based e-zine called China Insight. In the article, she recalls the first day I introduced myself to the class.  Her perspective can be compared with…

  • Teaching

    Teaching Nineteen Eighty-Four in Mao Country

    Every Wednesday evening six Chinese girls came to my apartment.  By the middle of the Spring 2010 term at Xiangnan University in the home province of Uncle Mao and General Tso, I had come to depend on them to keep me happy.  They were junior English majors and picked English names like Tina, Victoria, Christie, Helen, Cherries, Emilia, and Emma.  Without their attention, kindness, and passion, I surely would have gone crazy as is so much the fate of many foreigners who come to China looking for love or a new life.  But I am getting ahead of myself. It was a dismal cold day in March when I met…

  • Teaching

    A Day in the Life of a Fake Teacher in the Real China

    One day I found myself squealing like a pig in front of children.  I pushed my nose up, grunted, and oinked.  We were playing a simplified version of charades.  It was a Sunday afternoon in the bleak of January.  And this being China, it was bleaker than bleak.  The dean of my university had loaned me out to a private high school as a “favor.” My latest rendition caught the students’ attention.  Girls stopped texting and boys ceased roughhousing long enough to look up and shout “pig!” in unison.  I asked the teacher if they’ve played this game before, adding, “They’re very confident.”  Either the blood of Shakespeare coursed through…

  • Teaching

    Goodbye Year of the Ox

    Since I only teach three days a week, and spend most of my time studying, reading, blogging and sheltering from the cold, wintry rain it is easy to forget where I am.  A quick jaunt about the campus quickly reminds me that I’m not in Pennsylvania anymore. Just beyond the dingy metropolis, my university was nestled at the feet of a jagged, tent-like mountain, green with bamboo, shrubbery, and leafy sword blade foliage.  Students roamed the campus in packs on their way to classes, parties, or speeches.  Every day at lunch and dinnertime a campus wide loudspeaker system blares out happy-go-lucky pop music, advertisements and announcements in Chinese as well…

  • Teaching

    It's Gettin' Hot in Here (So Hot)

    “Wow, you ah sooo stro-ooong.”  The tone of his voice turned each of the last two words into something bisyllabic.   The student had been scoping me out.  This is what it feels like to be a zoo animal or a celebrity in America, and just an ordinary foreigner in Chenzhou, China. My job was to be a teacher.  But I was also working off the clock as a professional foreigner. I was in the university gym and recreation center.  It was below freezing outside and Crazy English Mountain was dusted with snow.  There were no heaters in the school, and you could see your breath in the air.  I had…