100 Days Of School

When I got my schedule to teach they included all the holidays, days off, and 100 days of school. I found out that I would give a presentation, give two demo lessons, and have parent teacher conferences on that day and my students would have a concert to display things they learned from every subject. Here is how it went down.

I watched the ceremony and let me tell you, it is cool. In the Chinese tradition when a child turns 8 they would have this ceremony but now that everyone goes to school, they changed it to be the 100 days of education for first grade students.

The students wear traditional Han outfits. The girls have to put their right hands over left and boys have to put left hand over right. I was told it was because left means powerful (it looks close to the Chinese character I think) and the men usually had more powerful position in government (due to patriarchy). The students wash their hands in a bowl of water (right hand first for girls, left hand first for boys) to show that they are cleansing themselves of their past. The teachers told me it is similar to baptisms. 

After washing their hands the students will kneel on mats and recite a poem about knowledge. They will approach the stage and write the Chinese character for person. This is to show that the students are moving from childhood to being a fully developed adult. The students take their scrolls and kneel on their mats once again and a teacher walks up to them with red paint. The teachers place a red dot on the foreheads of the students to show that their knowledge chakra has been opened.

After this the students show the parents what they have learned. The students created a lego puzzle from their math class, talked about the planet, played xylophones, sang songs about how awesome parents are, performed karate (they broke pieces of wood!), showed their artwork, and then sang two English songs that I taught them. The first was about rainbows and the second about numbers 1-20.

The last part of the ceremony the teachers brought out cakes and selected students and parents came from the audience and wrote, in English, "Happy 100 Days!" Everyone got a piece of cake and then the parents would continue with parent teacher conferences.

Remember when I said that Chinese parents were known to be intense? Yep, that is a thing. The number one question I got from parents was, "Can my students have more homework?" YES. MORE HOMEWORK. I was told that first grade students should be given no homework and we told parents that too, but they were not satisfied. Right now we are thinking of ways for students to practice more at home. I have already given parents apps to use, books to read, and that they can place sticky notes around the house for students to practice their vocabulary. They seemed pretty happy with that response.
Parents also told me that they thought I should be more strict with their students and punish more. o_O That was unexpected.

A really cool thing that parents told me was that the students loved learning English and were impressed by how much they learned already. It was pretty motivating to hear that.

So it has been 100 days of teaching and I love every moment of it. Here is to 200 days!