AWOL and other Miscellaneous Crimes

Ahhhh, the surprises that each day can bring here! One would never guess! That is the good part, actually, one of the many good parts about this job: lots of unpredictable situations.... Today in class, we finished off the American Short Study, the 13 founder states (who by the sayings of half my class had mysteriously turned into 15 for about 10 minutes or so)... we established the list and wrote them all on the blackboard, so we realized that they were actually 13, like yesterday.... what a relief! Then, we were off to discover the meaning of all the English names my students adopted for themselves. The Chinese NEED to know what is in a name, it is of utmost importance to them. So, I had waded through several websites and collected the meaning of all their names, then presented them neatly in a table, alphabetical order and all. From my observations, most were happy with what they discovered: the "glorious", the "loved by the Gods" the "Victorious" and so on, they beamed and looked quite content! Then, it was time for the break: 9:15 till 9:30. At the end, most students were back in class, but some arrived about 5 minutes later. However, we were still 4 short. Where the heck did they go? Nobody could find them anywhere. We picked up our classes: next subject: Build a detective story.Who done it?Mrs. McDonald was found dead this Monday, at 9:00 am, in her home. What happened? How did she die? Was it murder? I explained to them what we were going to do, and I asked them to form groups of three students. Well, that did do no good, as nothing happened. I looked around: what is the matter? Don�t you understand "group"? or "three students"?Ahhhh, now it came out! They balked at the other requirement I had given: each group must have at least one girl or one boy in it. NO all girls or all boys groups!They tried to argue the point, but my position was: "I can make the groups for you, or you do it yourselves. You have 10 seconds to make up your mind which way we are going to handle this. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6,.... "Ok, ok, Mona, we will do it!" "Thanks, folks!! wheeeew!" Nothing is ever simple!So, after 5 minutes, we had 2 groups of 3 folks each. The rest of my 12 present (and by sheer coincidence, we had 6 boys/6 girls) were sitting around loosely, no group in sight. "What is it this time?" "We don't want to make a group, we want to work like this"... "Ah no, sorry, no can do! You have 10 more seconds now, and I am counting 10, 9....8... 7... " It worked this time, and we finally had our little groups set up. Oh well, groups is too much of a description here... I'd say, rather some vague approach in the approximate same area of the classroom. I managed to make them join the same table and sit down together. 30 minutes later.... finally... we were on to the next step... explain how to proceed with our task. "Ok, you are all working for the FBI, and you are teams of detectives leading the investigation in this case. You will ask questions, then find the answers to those questions and thus, manage to build your case.' I gave them examples of what questions to ask: Who called in the death of Mrs. M.? Who found her? Where was she found? Why did that person who found her, show up at her place at 9 in the am? Did they know each other? How old is Mrs. M.? Was she married? Does she have friends? Neighbors? Relatives? What was she wearing? Clothes? Pajamas? Nothing? (that gave rise to some cheerful snickers, lol).And so on.... "Now get going and don't let anybody know what you are doing, the other teams must not find out about your secret inquiry!"The buzz in that class room! All were so excited about how to figure out this case! I walked around from group to group to see how they were getting along, gave some advise, asking them more questions...I found that all groups had difficulties working in teams. There was Victor, who has a good level of vocabulary and knows how to speak quite fluently: He wielded the pen and wrote at top speed, while his two team mates were sitting there, looking on, their hands in their laps! I nudged Victor gently but firmly into a more open and cooperative mode, not easy to do, as he was determined to write a novel. I reminded him: "Victor, the idea here is to ask questions, write them down, then determine what would be a good answer... which then leads you to the next question, and so on... and each person in your team must find questions." Victor: "Yes, yes, I know, but I want to just write this one piece, I just have this idea..." Mona: "Yes, that is great that you have an idea, but the format here is questions and answers, not a story in story format". Victor:� Yes I know, but I want to just write this one part here." Mona: "Victor, you are the strongest in your team, you need to guide the other two and help them work with you, ok? They need your help, so stop now, and make a questionnaire together with them... now, Victor! PLEASE!" Ah, finally, Victor drops the pen and raises his head to acknowledge his other two mates. Ok, I think, we got them on track now... next team....the next team is overly zealous, all three write in their respective notebooks, but no communication is occurring. I inquire how things are going, and they all tell me they are doing the work. Well, wonderful, but you three need to write one inquiry together, not three!" Yes, but my idea is good... say all three like one. "Great, keep two of them for the next round another day, now we want one story, made up by 3 people, that is it, folks, ok?" As I make my rounds over and over, slowly, the inquiries are actually taking on a good shape, and the story lines evolve. Mrs. M. died in her bathroom, she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend who now hates her: he put poison into the hot water tank, and when she took a shower, the poison killed her by penetrating through her skin.Mrs. M. died in her kitchen, because her husband killed her with a Tai Chi sword. He dumped it in the trash can, but our detectives found the finger prints and arrested him. He planned on marrying his girl friend!Mrs. M died killed by her sister: she choked her with a pillow, then she tried to make it look like a suicide by slicing the dead woman's wrists... she hoped to inherit her fortune. We were having an exciting morning!In the meantime, about 20 or so minutes into the start-up of our adventure, I had locked the door to the class room, thus making sure that any hefty late comers would not just sneak in and pretend all was well in our little world. I never minded a little belated return, say, a grace period of 5, even 10 minutes on occasion... but half an hour?! No way! In the first days of our togetherness, they had the habit of not showing up at all after breaks, thinking it was my duty to go out and collect them all, one by one. I explained to them that they were not ABC students and thus capable of knowing how long lasted 15 minutes. So, they were expected back on time, all by themselves. This seems a novel idea to them, as they said without a bell to ring them, they would not know what to do. I suggested a look at their wrist watch instead, and that worked relatively decently, until today for our 4 vagrants.So now here was one of them, rattling the handle of the door, waving through the panes, signaling he wanted back in. I waved back at him, shaking my head, pointing at the clock, and signaling back: NO!Returning my attention to my work with the class, I noticed that now, he tried to pry open the windows, to climb inside, but that yielded no results. Again, he knocked at the door, but I instructed everybody to keep on working. They did. After about 20 minutes, Ed, our vagrant student, had decided he needed to write me a letter, which he pushed inside through the crack at the bottom of the door. A student handed it to me. I read: �Dear Mona Teacher, I�m sorry. I�m wrong. I know I�m not right. I�m not carefully. I want to go to Student English. I want to come in. Love from Ed.�
Aha, we are talking now! I read the letter to the class and consulted them: �What do you think? Should we let him in, or should he stay outside?� �Let him back in� was the consensus. So I opened the door and he sneaked back in. Then, another 30 or 40 minutes later, two more of our AWOLs showed up, and rattled the door handle to get in. Same treatment: entry denied. They attempted several more forced entries, but finally gave up and disappeared again. All others worked diligently until the end of our daily lesson. As they left, our two late comers, Harper and my favorite �Hungry Henry�, showed up again. I discovered them upon my return to the class for cleaning chores, writing on the blackboard, which they had neatly divided into two halves, one for each of them. Two further �Dear Mona� letters, in chalk this time. As they saw me, they said they wanted to write to me about this incident. So I invited them to use paper. At this point, I love paper trails, lol! It makes for a better detective story, ha ha ha. My two penitent students sat down and wrote me their excuses on a sheet of paper, while I got the digital cam out to take a pic of their chalk prose. Makes for good memories!Here is what they wrote:�Dear Mona, I�m too sorry. In this morning, I have no eat food. Because I�m get up the bed too late. I�m go to school. And go shop to eat some food. But I�m too slowly. At the end, I�m go to school. But I too later. I�m very very sorry to that. Please, you pardon me. But I think I can�t do that. Harper�And Henry:�Dear Mona, I am sorry. I know you very angry with me. Today I didn�t have breakfast first. I know I have a large mistake. I believe I won�t do it again. I am sorry. I am sorry. I believe myself OK. Thank you. Next day, I don�t do it again. I�m sorry to trouble you. Please, believe me. Henry�There you have it� my Watson/Holmes whiskers tell me something sounds set up in these two strikingly similar versions of �Im sooooo soooorrryyy! Letters�, wouldn�t you agree?I have not heard anything from Kobe, AWOL # 4. We shall get the latest scoop on that tomorrow.
All the others were so engrossed in their detective stories that they did not even notice the end of the classes roll around. We will have to finish this tomorrow. I�ll let you know what the outcome is going to be.
It occurs to me more and more that Chinese students have not the first idea about team work. As single children, they never learn to share at home, all is due them exclusively. And in their regular class rooms, with 70 or more students, they never get to do any team work, either, just individual memorizing of words, and exercise writing. Where is all of this going to lead China? People who do not know how to do team work will not be able to survive in corporate structures. Not to mention that is also not very positive for general life situations. These kids don�t want to help the weaker ones in school, for fear of losing an advantage. The idea here is: Why should I help you? It will make me look less outstanding! I am trying to instill in them the idea of the stronger taking care of the weaker, tutoring and helping them to be able to follow the flow of studies. They only go that route reluctantly, but they go, because I insist heavily. Interesting, how a society that declares itself to be communist begets little selfish �me-mehers�!
So, now I�ll have to prepare some more lesson material for tomorrow, and then, it�ll be the end of my day here!Be well y�all and enjoy your day!