Yang Jie's Experience in America in 2015
[Date:2015-09-24] | Author:外事办 Hits: | [ContentSize:X M S] |
What I saw and what I thought when I was in America
By Yang Jie
This summer vacation, I was honored to get a chance to visit the United States.
I really appreciated it. As an English teacher, I am always eager to open my
eyes. In the process of globalization, we do need to communicate with other nations more
often, so I feel so lucky to be offered a chance to go outside. In addition,we all know
that the USA is an advanced country with excellent educational system. I do believe the
visiting will be a vital experience for a Chinese English teacher like me. With such kind
of strong belief, we started our camp. And now I found I really need some change
from what I have learned in the U.S. to my students and I want to share my
own experience with my friends and colleagues.
1. Appropriate games make students participate in class.
We first went to Carolina Friends School (C.F.S)North Carolina for the first
week of our camp. The students met their first teacher Jenny here. She is
so kind and easy-going, and no doubt she is a really professional teacher.
In fact, she works at a high school, and she teaches ESL (English as
a second language) students.What impressed me most was that she encouraged
students to play different kinds of games in her class.
At the very beginning of the first class, she asked the students to sit in a
circle.She took out a ball and told us to play a “game”-------
Introduce yourself by using three or
four sentences and pass the ball to
anyone after you finish. You can imagine if there were no ballsand
she just asked the students to introduce themselves to others, the
students would be definitely bored. But when you give them a ball, and
the most important thing was that they could choose anyone they wanted by
passing the ball. That really inspired them to get involved. Psychologists
think that only when you like something, you will think and participate in
what you are required. What she did told us the interaction between the
students and the teachers or students themselves is not just through language,
but also by playing some fun games when you are teaching languages. If you
don’t know what your students are thinking and what they need, you won’t be
able to carry out your teaching. And from Jenny’s class, we can find out, the
important thing is not playing games, (in fact, we also play different kinds
of games with our students in our class), it is that you have to know the
aim of the games you designed quite well, they must be exercisable, effective
and meaningful, only students love them will they be eager to learn the
things that you teach. Activities in games can make students more interested
and concentrated in what they are learning. They can also show students’
creativeness and subjective initiative.
We teachers should learn or create more games to make our students have fun
learning English. After all, it’s not easy to apply the studen-tcentered teaching
in class because our students are always changing, we ought to adjust ourselves
to meet our students’ need.
2. Let students participate in class by encouraging them to do more group
research study.
We all know group research study is one of the most useful and important
ways for students. But do we really know how to operate this kind of way
in our class effectively? Our American colleagues have given us some good
examples. For the second week, we moved to our sister school-----Camelot Academy.
Here we met our second teacher Amy who is so professional and strict.
I clearly remembered that everyone of us (including me) got a file about what
the students would do and learn for the whole week when we attended her first
class. From the content of the file, all of us could feel she had got everything
ready for the students and known clearly about what they needed indeed. She divided
the students into two groups at the beginning.
The most important part of her plan is the Invention Project. She first gave
the students some inspiration by providing some problems. She encouraged them
to talk about what problems they meet in their daily life in groups and asked
them to wrote down the problems on their paper. Then let them brainstorm
different solutions to the problems. What she did well was that she could give
them help when they didn’t know how to express what they wanted, and she just
gave them totally freedom to discuss. Everyone of them got involved in the
activities and they did figure out what they could do to solve their problems.
In groups, the students really got many good ideas when they exchanged their
thoughts. They drew their inventions on the paper, and picked 1 or 2 designs
of which they would build models at The Scrap Exchange. At the Scrap Exchange,
they worked with each other in different groups, they completely experienced what
is Group Research Study------
Everyone cooperated with each other, anyone can raise questions,
anyone can doubt anything, anyone can give ideas, everyone offers
help if their partners need .
Finally when they have done their models, we could feel all of them had
such kind of feeling of gratification. I do believe that what made them happy
was not the results,but the process in which they took part. We all know
there is a saying, “He who would do great things should not attempt them all alone.” I think
this sentence has perfectly explained the real meaning of the group research
study.
3. Respect every individual’s feelings, cultivate perfect personality
I still remembered one thing happened when we were about to leave C.F.S.,
we were invited to watch the play which was performed by the American students
who are only 5 or 6 years old. Nearly all the students and teachers in the
schools including the parents came to watch. Just before the play, one of the
actors, (a little girl, I guessed she was frightened by so many people) cried
just before she had to step on the stage. Almost all the people noticed, of
course the teacher did, too. She directly came up to her, hold her up and took
her to a corner. I found the teacher talked with the girl for a few minutes, and
the girl didn’t stop crying but just shook her head. I knew she was afraid to
perform in front of so many people, and maybe that was her first time in her life.
“What will the teacher do? Will she scold her or encourage her to …?” The
teacher said nothing but just took her away. Two minutes later, she came back
alone, told the other actors that they had to change their plan. Finally
they still gave us a wonderful performance and got our enthusiastic applause.
The American teacher’s behavior told us that sometimes respecting the
individual’s feelings means giving him or her time and space , where you do not
have to persuade them, what you need to do is just use your action to tell
them,do not care about the success temporarily but care about the long-term
development.I do think this experience can give and teach the little girl more
than the performance itself.
All in all, this summer camp is worthwhile, and I do hope what I have written
above can help you to deal with the problems in your class or life more
effectively and efficiently. And of course, I’d like to receive any
comments and advice from you! Thanks!