Teaching Inspection

I was told yesterday that my English class would be inspected by people from the Shaoguan Education bureau. A teacher inspection - and apparently they only wanted to watch the "English teacher". I think it was more of a "check-up-on-the-volunteer" event than a regular school check. Why else would they pick this week to do it? But of course, I will never really know the answer; in China, many things are unseen, unheard and pass by undetected.

Like my water heater, for example, in which I was supposed to pay $900 + RMB for! No bill for me? Which reminds me of my window security issue. I have to install metal bars to keep thieves out.

Anyways, the P.3 teachers in the staff room told me to prepare for the inspection. I swapped classes with the Math teacher for this period on Wednesday, and she told me hurriedly that the inspectors would be coming for my class. She also tried to sneakily get my phone number. You'd think this was a normal move, but apparently in China this is a cunning trick to get other teachers to substitute classes for teachers who wanted to slack off. I was forewarned by Sarah about this, so I told a little white lie -

"My phone number is a Hong Kong one... I don't have a China mobile, and my HK number costs a lot".

Ha -

Not to be outwitted, I hurried back into my dorm and started to think. There's an hour to go before my first class at 10:00am - what do I do? Should I prepare a little test for the children? Yesterday, I set a test for Class 3 and they were extremely quiet. Many of them listened hard to my instructions and surprisingly, many scored 100. It's probably because my test was too easy, but nonetheless that worked to keep them quiet!

So - I wrote till my arms hurt... I wrote 40 pages of tests for the class I was going to be inspected for, in the same format as Class 3's yesterday. In the class, the kids were REALLY quiet because they knew 3 people were coming in to watch. They sat at the back and scribbled notes... I felt strange, as if I was really a teacher being inspected and not a mere volunteer and a student that was ... not much older than the kids I was teaching (although no one knew that!).

It was funny- I ignored the inspectors ... the children were exceptionally well-behaved. Ha! I hope we got good marks from them after the end. I wonder if I can read their reviews or comments ....

Life update: I've been sleeping quite poorly these days. I woke up at 4:30am, 2:30am and 5:00am for 3 consecutive days... Very tired and feeling generally POOR. I hope it gets better. I'm also having issues with water shortage ... for the toilet. I can't flush! On a second note, I love taking pictures of children! They're adorable and I can spend hours editing their pictures.