R-U-S-S-I-A! Russia, Russia! All the WAY!

The second half of the summer of 2006 was spent in Nanning, Guangxi, PRC. I (along with the rest of my team) taught conversational English to middle school and high school students. Most of the students in China are very good at reading and writing in English, but their speaking and listening skills aren't as good. The organization I go with sends college students into the schools for this reason....for 4 weeks, the students are being taught English by native English speakers who, for the most part, cannot communicate effectively to them in Chinese. They are forced to work on their speaking and listening. It was amazing to see the improvement in all of the students in only a 4 week time period!

This is a view of the classrooms. My classroom is the first door on the right on the 2nd floor.

A view of the courtyard with some of the kids playing!

The primary school that was next door. This pic is from the balcony of my dorm room.

My teaching partner, Aaron, and me!

My AMAZING class! RUSSIA!!

The last picture is a picture of my students for the summer. I spent many hours with these 15 amazing Chinese students. They ranged in age from 12-17 years old. The students were placed in classes based on their English proficiency. I was in Class 4...meaning that these kids were right in the middle. Many of them KNEW English well, but they were not very confident in their abilities. It was neat to see that change throughout the summer.

As you can see, my class was "Russia". Since the Olympics will be in Beijing in 2008, we added some "English Olympics" as a fun way to help them learn. Each class was a different country and they would compete against each other once a week. Surprisingly, Russia turned out to be pretty competitive....and I'm not sure who it was to make them that way!! JK. Most of you know me and know that I am VERY competitive!! We spent a lot of time practicing our cheers and chants because I wanted them to be the LOUDEST CLASS!! And yes, they did that quite well! It was so much fun to hear them cheer and chant with their Chinese accents.

I do have some video of that, but I'm not sure how to make it work. So...I will work on it, and try to get it up here sometime so that you can hear them too!

R-U-S-S-I-A! Russia, Russia! All the WAY!

We are from Russia! We are the best YA! We are from Russia! We are gonna crush YA!