The School

Let me tell you about the school that I work at: 

It’s called the School of Dreams.  It’s in an old warehouse, in which they’ve built classrooms along the perimeter of the building, and a stage and a playground in the center.  Each classroom has rows of tables and benches, with 2 students per table.  The classrooms have a blackboard, a projector screen, a stage, and a podium, with fans on the walls for circulation (no A/C). 

The center of the warehouse where there is a basketball hoop and ping pong tables.  People also park their scooters and bikes here.  The car belongs to the headmistress.

The stage

A classroom

The teachers rotate between the classrooms, as opposed to each teacher having his/her own room.  Each teacher has a cubicle space in a central office to do planning and grading.  However the English teacher (me) gets a private office, where I have a computer and internet, so Skype with me please :)  I have a break at work from 8-9pm PST Monday-Friday.

My office

There is a kitchen/dining area, where a cook makes lunch for the 260 kids and 16 adults.  The food is made from scratch, using fresh ingredients. It’s not processed, frozen, and reheated as cafeteria food often is in America.  Lunch is definitely a nice perk to this job.  I just go to the dining area at noon, the food is ready, I eat, and then they wash the dishes. 

The bathroom has one row of toilets for the boys, one row for the girls, and there are two private bathrooms for the adults, one with a squatty potty and one with a western style toilet.  Again, they gave special consideration for the foreign teacher. 

There are about 260 students from Preschool to 6^th grade, with about 40 students in each grade.  The order of the grades is preschool (學 前 斑), grade 1 (一 年 級), grade 2 (二 年 級), grade 3 (三 年 級), etc.  There’s no kindergarten.  At first I thought it was weird for it to go from preschool to 1^st grade, because a preschooler is so much different than a 1^st grader in America.  But I have come to see that the numbering system is quite logical – you have a pre school grade, then you have the 1^st grade, with the 1^st grade being quite basic and foundational.

The principal here is better translated as a headmistress – 校 長 – the first word means school and the second word means the head, so she is the head of the school.

The students have 7 periods each day from 8:10 am to 4:20 pm.  The subjects that they study are Chinese language, math, P.E., music, arts and crafts, and foreign language (English).  I guess they learn some science and history in their Chinese class, but they study this more in middle and high school. 

These are a few of the things that I’ve noticed being different here.  If there is anything else you want to know, just ask :)