南菁中学 NanJing High School

Oh, I just don't see the light at the end of the censorship tunnel anymore. Everything from facebook to blogger is still blocked--and cracks found are cracks soon patched. The one blinding ray of bright light in this storm of well-executed oppression is that I'm no longer wasting time. Yeah! I never realized how much time facebook and blogging cost me until this paranoid government crushed them to itty bitty little pieces and forced me to concentrate on the job at hand.  And so I guess in some ways this prolonged block on all things social is sorta working out for me because as it turns out I'm so much busier this year. I can use the time!   Anyways, the block is still leaky enough for me to toss things out at ya. As I mentioned below, I can't read my blog, but I can still email things to it so that you can stay updated. And so I'm going to take this occassion of my 8-day holiday to bring you up to speed.   I am living in the affluent city of Jiangyin (江阴) of the affluent province of Jiangsu (江苏). After spending a month here, I am convinced that this place is nearly perfect. Nearly, not quite. Let's air out these complaints to dry before we take in the clean laundry. (1) I'm not a big fan of the food here; bland blends of vegetables and rice don't get me overly excited for lunch or dinner. Luckily there are immigrants from Sichuan and Gansu who can cook up some dishes with a bit more flavor (adding sugar to dishes is not much of a trick, to all you Jiangsu loyalists). Unfortunately I haven't been able to find any food representing the flavors of 陕西. Anyways, so I'm not amazed by the food; but I'm definitely eating my fill. (2) The weather disappoints me mostly. We're sitting in October here, and the only jacket I get to wear is a rain coat. That's because it's still warm, sometimes muggy, and sometimes rainy. Meh, no big deal; it's just not the kind of autumn I prefer.   But everything else is great. The city size is neither too big nor too small. It has restaurants, shopping, and entertainment that range in price and quality--and all are easily accessed as a product of the convenient layout of the city. The city is clean. It feels safe. It's modern. It has an ace public transportation system.   As nice as all of that is, it's all bonus. I came here to teach; and this school provides the educational environment of every teacher's dreams. The school is modern (construction 'finished' this summer). Every classroom has advanced technology, including a computer, a projector system, sliding layers of blackboards, a smartboard, and a network for accessing the Internet and shared folders across the entire school. All teachers have access to a printing room with limitless opportunity to make photocopies and print classroom materials. In most classes, there are about 50 students in a spacious room, but my classrooms have a little over 30 students in each. The school also boasts a massive three-floor cafeteria with the top floor being the teachers' cafeteria decorated to look like an elegant restaurant. The school has a colossal outdoors sports complex with a track, regulation soccer pitch, and multiple basketball courts; a separate library building; a separate, multi-floored indoor gymnasium building; a eight-story administration building; a theatre; multiple classroom buildings; and multiple large lecture halls. Oh, and we can't forget the parking garage, the students' dorms, the teachers' dorms, and the International Center--which includes hotel rooms and our foreign teachers' apartments. This is all that I've seen--there's probably still more stuff here. I estimate it takes 10 minutes to walk from one side of campus to the other!   How about some pictures!...   towering administration building, gymnasium to the right, library far back right   grade3 classroom building to the left and tower in the back     Grade1 building to the left; Grade2 building to the right; courtyard in the center     courtyard and lecture halls, theatre back left, not sure about other building     a pond courtyard... yes, it has a pond courtyard too! You should see it at night!     THEATRE ROOM     Holiday performances   A school is nothing without the proper internal structure, but this school has that too. I am blessed to have been placed within a cohesive and talented department of foreign and Chinese teachers. We cooperate in every aspect of teaching--from lesson integration to grading. Let me give you an example--I teach the students advanced vocabulary words in their TOEFL class. The literature teacher highlightst those words in her class and uses them whenever possible. The chemistry teacher has begun to use the words in her classes too! The literature teacher and I even co-teach two lessons a week--entirely on our own initiative. I'm telling you, we all work together on a level that I would have had a hard time imagining two months ago. In short, our Ameson department of teachers are flexible, determined, and supportive. We also have suitable support from the administrators at our school and the administrators at the Ameson Institute. Let me give you an example. The lesson that the literature teacher and I co-teach involves active learning and going outside. The administration let us do this (remember, Chinese teachers don't take their students outside!). In the second week, our students were too noisy, and many Chinese teachers complained to the administrators. The administrators only told us that we should choose a place that is further away from the classroom area. They still completely support our method.     our department office     Well, there's one more subject to addres. Think about it...  Yeah, I haven't told you about the students yet. They're are the critical part of the equation, eh? Well, the students are...   [stay tuned for scenes from the next episode]