Happy National Teacher's Day!

So today is National Teacher’s Day here in China.  As far as I can tell this just means that pupils give presents to their favourite teachers and say ‘Happy Teacher’s Day’ – good to see the concept is simple and straight forward.  I’m not sure how big a deal it is but it looked like there were about 10 ex-pupils on campus giving one of their old teachers some pretty swanky gifts – teachers in the UK are obviously missing a trick here.

I decided not to get my hopes up that I would receive any priceless jewels from my students – it is only week two, people recognising me as a bona-fide teacher and wishing me “Happy Teacher’s Day, Teacher” was enough for me. Saying that though I did get a gift, which was a lovely surprise – A jar of stars!  This very sweet pupil has spent her holiday weekend folding A LOT of strips of paper into tiny little, perfectly shaped, origami stars and filling a jar with them – I love how beautiful and colourful it is. I think she was pretty concerned I wasn’t going to like it and has made me promise to take it home with me – that’s a big promise to make when there’s a luggage weight limit at stake! 

I know that statement makes me sound ungrateful but I’m genuinely blown away by the fact she decided to spend all that time crafting this gift for me when I’d only taught her once and I hadn’t even had a one-on-one conversation with her….

After I wrote this part of the post, I got two more lovely gifts from my following two classes. I got a little pot plant from one accompanied by lovely note and a doodle drawing of me (it was quite good). My last class of the afternoon gave me a carnation and a card. How sweet is all of that after only having taught them once! I was also after a little pot plant, so after a week they obviously have me sussed!

My Teacher's Day gift haul - I was impressed!

The lovely note attached to my plant

Today the teacher’s celebrate Teacher’s Day by having a meeting this afternoon. I think (and hope) it’s different from usual meetings, from what I’ve been told there’s more singing and dancing performances (from both teachers and pupils) than your everyday bog-standard meeting.  Sadly though it doesn’t look like Tom and I will be going because the internet man is booked then to come and fix our internet – this time internet trumps culture (I’m a little upset about that to be honest – Teacher’s Day only comes once a year!)

In other news the corruption of Chinese imaginations is going better today – they are getting into the swing of dreaming of the perfect school (what a relief).  Yesterday definitely taught me that giving students examples of what you want them to do is the key to success (and not getting a reputation for being a boring teacher).

G x

Ps. So I missed out on the teacher’s day meeting AND the internet man fixed Tom’s internet but not mine – I’m not impressed!