Sichuan Teachers
I love teaching teachers. I don't know what it is, really, the collegiality, the fact that we have a sort of shared suffering, the fact that we understand each other's jokes, but I love it. For the last five years I have had teachers from Sichuan University, from Chengdu China, come to visit at least once a year for about three weeks. My task is to give them some insight into American educational practices and attempt to be a master teacher. It is intimidating in a way, because there is a language, culture, and pedagogical divide that separates us in very real and important ways. But I also think that divide creates some of the excitement that we all feel when we realize we aren't that different from each other after all.
Yesterday, for example, we celebrated the Chinese New Year. Since my class starts at nine, and by cosmic coincidence, the Chinese New Year happened precisely at nine am, we had a countdown together. Here it is. I can't tell you how much fun I have, and how much I learn. It is an exchange in the truest sense. I feel more Chinese each time I train these teachers. Even my wife, who is not the cultural adventurer that an ESL teacher generally marries, talks about visiting Chengdu.
I want to see the pandas. I want to eat hot pots. I want to see the university.
But mostly, I want to see my teachers and my friends.
