The Fall of my Discontent

There is a general sense of disenchantment hanging in the atmosphere at Maple Leaf this year, which even manages to flap my unflappable optimism. Maybe these sentiments have simply been exacerbated by the twelve-and-a-half-hour workday I put in yesterday and I'm sure I'll find some relief after our week-long trip to Chengdu coming up September 27.

It all starting with a tantalizing, yet elusive carrot dangled before our noses. We had planned to start this year with professional learning communities - a block built into our weekly schedule for small-scale local pro-d. This was intended to go hand-in-hand with a laptop program which would equip each student with one computer so that they would be able to use language programs to improve their English while we were in our learning communities. This plan is still pending approval and is now set to begin in February, so for the first two terms, the admin adjusted the schedule to Plan B. This plan was brilliant in theory, but impossible to implement in practice. We have five 75-minute blocks every day, and the kids take nine different classes. We alternate between day 1 and day 2 on Monday/Wednesday and Tuesday/Thursday respectively, while Fridays alternate every other week between day 1 and day 2. We teach 6 of the 9 blocks and get 3 blocks of prep time. So you might be wondering what happens to the tenth block? At first, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon was scheduled tutorial time. Our tutorials were actually built into the timetable. I naively thought this was wonderful and scheduled my tutorials for the end of Tuesday and Wednesday lunch. My schedule is a little unbalanced this year since all my prep blocks are on Monday and Wednesday, whereas I teach straight through Tuesday and Thursday. I still put my tutorial on Tuesday, just to ensure I would never need to stay after school for tutorial. The trouble was that after the first week, it was evident that most students were not attending tutorials, so there were a lot of unsupervised kids running around, which really didn't please the Chinese administration. In comes the sudden change of plans. Instead of tutorials and the end of the day on Tuesday/Thursday, now we need to hold classes with our flag-ceremony homeroom kids in order to ensure that every student is in a class. This year Sherman Jen hired a bunch of experts to help us with English enhancement across the curriculum. So in our previous tutorial blocks, now each of us teaches an English enhancement lesson. We are provided with a lesson plan, but the trouble is that it's the same lesson plan for ESL students who have barely learned a hundred words, to the grade 12 zhou en lai class who are studying words like fallaciloquence for the SAT. Last class, the students spent 75 minutes making flashcards.

The trouble is that now I've had to move my tutorial block to afterschool (while I kept the Wednesday one at lunch time). So here's what happened yesterday: wake up at 5 am to shower early so that the hot water recovers enough for Anita's 6:30 am shower (our hot water lasts about 10-15 minutes and then takes about an hour to recover), go to school at 6 to prep/mark, start teaching Math 10 at 7:40-8:55, 15-minute break spent answering student questions, Math 10 again from 9:10-10:25, 25-minute flag break spent answering questions and checking dBabble, Math 12 from 10:50-12:05, lunch spent in a Math 11 meeting, Math 12 again 1:00-2:15, homeroom block making flashcards 2:30-3:45, afterschool tutorial typically 3:45-4:45, but this time I had to invigilate exams for kids who claim to already have credit for math courses completed in other countries so tutorial went until 6:30 pm. Come home too exhausted to eat dinner (but still managed to heat up some pepper steak and mashed potatoes, mmm :)

Aparently these homeroom-tutorials are supposed to last only until the September holiday and the admin is looking for ways to improve the situation. There have been rumours that we might return to the old timetable of seven 50-minute blocks per day, but that wouldn't provide enough break time between classes for teachers to run back and forth between the two campuses. Rodi, for example, teaches boys on the fifth floor, then girls (a five-minute trot across the somewhat dangerous street) on the four floor, then boys again on the 5th, girls on the 4th, boys on the 5th and finally girls on the 4th. She will be so fit by the end of the year!

Money is tight in the Maple Leaf system this year after the expansion of the school buildings despite declining enrollment. Teachers on the boy's campus need to account for every whiteboard marker they use (for me, these whiteboard markers run out after two blocks of teaching). I've been trying for weeks to get a key to my console so I can use my projector like I did for lessons last year, but I wasn't able to get it until yesterday. I was elated to open my console, only to find that the wiring hasn't been completed yet. This means I need to rewrite all my lessons from last year and that I'm going through exponentially more whiteboard markers.

The one positive thing is the Maple Leaf people. We're all in this together and somehow the trials only strengthen our bonds. I don't blame the admin team - they're a wonderful bunch, but it's just difficult to find compromises and solutions within this Chinese/Canadian system. There's still so much segregation between the two cultures - it would be so nice if we worked together more. Here's hoping that all the wrinkles will get ironed out soon!