昨天又给我的”真爱“， 继任老师， 写信了。介绍了更多关于学生的学习和纪律的具体情况，在念叨了大约四页纸后，突然感觉自己可能真的上年纪了，才会这么事无巨细，一边又惶恐剥夺继任老师自己成长的机会。Anyway, 这些是我当初刚接手时想知道却没有的，希望对新老师有益。而我也愿意成为一名栽树者：我栽树，我光荣。

A letter to future Chinese guest teacher #2

Yiheng  6/15/16

Hi there,

There is only 7 workdays left until school is out. I am still working on my program folder, hoping to add in as more materials as I can, in which you can find materials about daily life, how Pathfinder works, samples of my lesson plans;foreign language standards; curricula and also other articles I wrote about how to settle down in Seattle, how to see a doctor in US, yearly pacing calendar,teaching reflections, case study etc. In the last letter, I introduced Pathfinder briefly from all aspects. Today I’d like to talk more about my students and their learning.

First, elementary school, as you can see from the program folder, during the first year, I mainly taught them some simple vocabulary based on topics with the help of “Chinese Treasure Box” in which you can find great worksheets good for both elementary and middle school kids. However, it didn’t work out well because they only come once a week for 40 minutes.

During the second year, encouraged by Roger, our storyteller, I started to do more story-telling myself. I have told kids many stories related festivals: story of Chang’e (Moon Festival); story of Nian(Lunar New Year); story of Chinese Zodiac; story of the most beautiful bird(Lantern Festival); story of Zitui(Qingming Festival) and story of Quyuan(Dragon Boat Festival). I also told them stories that happened in my real life. They were interested. I meant to tell the story of Monkey King but I didn’t get chance to do it.I have got the book, puppets and masks of Monkey King; please tell them the story!

Except for storytelling, we did more projects together: making lanterns; doing Chinese calligraphy; writing Chinese characters; making shuttlecocks and kites; and also making dumplings with 4/5 graders. Kids like playing shuttlecocks and Ping pong a lot.There are other activities I didn’t get to do: paint Panda with brushes, ink cherry blossom; tea ceremony; chopstick competition etc. Let them play games! They will love you! But be careful about competition, though.

What’s more,we did a lot of singing this year. I also introduced a couple tang poems to them along with tang poem singing and tang poem kong fu. They also like taichi. I think you can do more of these with them.

About elementary kids’ behaviors, it can be tricky for a new teacher from another country to get to know all age levels’ differences. Just like what I wrote in the folder and letter one, give evaluation as a whole group and find out the "ACTIVE" one. Don’t forget the help from homeroom teachers and school administrators. Talk with other specialists during lunch time or Wednesday meeting. More importantly, ask homeroom teachers to give you a heads up and teachers in access room to see if there are kids who are high demanding before you meet the kids. Keep records of kids’ behaviors after classes every day. Don’t be afraid to reach out to parents. Be firm and strict.Set your tone at first class, otherwise they will take advantage of you.

P.S. One of my thoughts: maybe you can also use the app ClassDojo except for slip and referral from school. Simply by adding all the elementary classes in your ClassDojo account connect with parents and set a goal for them like if the whole class gets 500 points, they can watch a Chinese cartoon or Ping pong class. It’s easy to keep track of students’ behaviors and you can also post class photos and video to share with parents. That’s what I used in middle school last year. You can copy the class list from Gradebook on your desktop directly to ClassDojo.

Now is middle school Chinese classes’ turn. Kids in Chinese classes are all great kids; however my first year didn’t go well because of my lacking of experience and some other reasons. In Pathfinder, we divide kids into Chinese 1, 2 and 3 which doesn’t mean their language level but the years they have learned Chinese language.

Okay,Chinese 2 (mostly 7th graders), there are mostly boys in our class.They can be really talkative, stop them and don’t give them chance to talk back to you; otherwise they will try to get away from consequences.Most of them work hard in Chinese while some of them even study at home with Quiz let. We use a lot of Chinese in class and I am strict with them since day one so that they are doing great most of the time.They are good at stroke orders so they are not afraid of writing characters. I like to emphasize radicals so that they can tell meaning which I find it helpful for them to recognize the characters and make connections between characters. Their pinyin is not very good because they get confused with English; I have been asking them to practice type Pinyin on iPad so they are working on it. Make sure they keep typing and recognizing characters which is really important for them. The apps we often use are Quizlet and Padlet. As you can see from the pacing calendar, we stopped at Book 1 lesson 9. When they come back from summer, give them at least week to review things they have learned with games: pinyin, stroke orders, classroom expressions,daily expressions, lesson 1-9 and how to order food.

As for Chinese 3, they have been with me for 2 years; I’m sure it will be hard for you to “win them over”. And for the best of their learning, I’d like to give you some heads-ups:first,my apology that they are spoiled. They are great kids but they are absolutely capable of driving you crazy. Don’t doubt about it. What I want you to know is if they say “ Yiheng let us do this or that”or “ that’s not how Yiheng did it”; DON’T listen to them!!! You are the teacher and don’t give them the chance to manipulate you or interrupt your teaching plan.Actually it applies to all grade levels.Second,they will have a big test coming up soon in May, 2017 called STAMP test which is a language proficiency test and they will have to score 2 points at all listening, speaking, reading and writing to get ONE high school credit.You may need to organize the test yourself: contact Michelle and Pollyanna in April, 2017.You can find more materials in the program folder.

At this point, I’d like to remind you of one thing that textbook is not curriculum so that I have sorted the textbooks we use, “Happy Chinese”, based on novice level topics, so you can teach language by topics. Arrange your teaching pace properly so that you can cover all the topics and prepare them for STAMP test. Same as Chinese 2 let them practice typing Pinyin and recognizing characters with Quizlet and Padlet. I have created most of the lessons in Book one and two “Happy Chinese” on Quizlet; you can use the study sets I created. Also highly recommend you to get a teacher’ account on Quizlet which allows you to see class progress and play Quizlet.live. Quizlet is also a great app kids can us eat home. Please encourage them to work at home like Chinese 2.I also used Chirbit to let them record chants to practice speaking skills.Chinese 2 haven’t got the chance to learn how to use chirbit yet.

As for Chinese 1, you will have a group of kids from elementary school. They will be brand new and you can easily set your rules with them. You can look up the yearly pacing calendar to see how I paced the learning last year with Chinese 2 and also all my lesson plans from November last year online, but stick with your own plan.

Last but not least, Pathfinder Middle School Chinese classes need to practice more in listening skills. This is what we learned from the last group of kids’ STAMP test scores. I think two ways will help: first one is teacher uses as more Chinese as you can in class; the other one is using more authentic materials.As for how to apply authentic materials in class, you can give them video assignments like using EDpuzzle to let them watch videos and answer questions.Google forms are also a great way to insert videos in their assignments. Check out Catharine Ousselin’s blog to learn all the tricks--technology for world language teachers. I think if they speak more, that will also help with their listening. Check out Jian Gao’s “Rhymes & Rhythm for learning Chinese”. We have all 3 books in school.

Okay, I have to stop writing now; otherwise, there will be another 4 pages. :D

I love all the kids. Please take good care of them and do everything you can to guide them to be a better person and grow into a world citizen. Thanks a lot.