A front view of the school. Before I went to the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City, I didn't really understand the significance of the layout of this gate but now I see that it is designed to look like the old royal buildings (like the ones in the Forbidden City). You can see the lion statues which I showed you from the Summer Palace, you can see lots of red, which is a royal color, and if you look on the roof to the right, you can see the animals lined up to show the importance of the building. The school is called Beijing ROYAL school because the ground that it is on used to belong to royalty.
Beijing Royal School (BRS) is a private school and tuition for high school students is $20,000 per year! Most other schools prepare students for the Gaokao, the Chinese exam that tests students and determines what universities they can go to, what they can major in, and ultimately what profession they can have. A lot of pressure is put on Chinese students to do well on this exam since it really determines their future. Especially with the One-Child Policy in China (which was recently changed to a Two-Child Policy IF both parents are only children themselves), parents are very invested in their child’s success in school and on this exam so that they can attend a good university, have a good career, and support them when they are elderly. BRS is an international school that prepares students to attend a university abroad in the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia. So rather than preparing students to take the Gaokao, students at BRS are prepared to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language), the SAT, and AP exams for college credit.
This is a statue of Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, born in 551 BC. The religion of Confucianism is founded on his philosophy. Did you know that "Confucius" is a corruption of his real name "K'ung Fu-tzu"?
All of these tests are taken their junior year and parents spend a lot of money sending their child to this school, so students put in long days at school. The school day begins at 8:00 am and the students have 4, 45-minute long classes. Then they have a lunch break from 11:40 – 1:30 pm. Students go to one of the two cafeterias, eat with their friends, take a walk, and then take a nap before their next class. Even the Chinese teachers take a walk and nap after lunch. They give the American teachers a hard time for not doing this because we get tired later in the afternoon. After the break, students have another set of 4, 45-minute classes from 1:30 until 5:05. The dinner break is from 5:05 until 6:30. Then there are 3, 45-minute classes from 6:30 until 9:05… and then homework time! There are 10-minute breaks between each class, so if students want to do their hw then, they can. They could also work during the lunch and dinner breaks and from my understanding 1 or 2 of the periods are “elective” or study hall periods, so if they don’t have any electives, they can work on homework then, or just not do it, which also seems to happen a lot, at least in the English class I'm observing!
This is my mentor teacher's (and my) weekly schedule.
From the perspective of a teacher, the day is quite different. They don’t teach every class period. My mentor teacher teaches a total of 18 classes each week (13.5 hours of instructional time versus the 22.5 hours of instructional time in the United States). My mentor teacher and I only have 2 classes of 10th graders, so there are about 55 students, compared to the 90 my cooperating teacher and I had in NC, and there is MUCH less grading! I spent at least 4 hours grading every day in NC and here I haven’t graded a thing. That’s because we’re literally “teaching to the test.” It’s a TOEFL prep class so we just go through the book, doing the listening and reading exercises.
The students stay in the same classroom ALL day long with the same classmates (for the most part from 10th to 12th grade). The teachers move from class to class instead of the students. On one hand, the classroom is more the students’ own space since they stay there all day so they feel comfortable there and they have their own place to store their enormous pile of textbooks. I mean, they have their desk cubby full of books, their desktop full of books, and some of them even pull up a chair next to their desk to put the rest of the books. I took a picture of the stack and I’m thinking about making a poster out of it to show my students in the US when they complain about “too much homework”! Also, rather than having the same class for 1st period every day, the same class for 2nd period, etc., the schedule follows a weekly pattern, but not a daily pattern. For example, on Mondays the students may have Biology during 1st period, but during 8th period on Tuesdays. An advantage to this is that they have a given class at different times of the day during the week, which means they aren't always sleepy during Biology since they don’t have that for 1st period every day, but a disadvantage is that there’s a lot of jumping around and teachers and students have to keep checking the schedule to see what’s coming next.
The next pictures are of the classroom. I think it's funny that in every classroom I've seen, there are Christmas decorations everywhere. Actually, if you go into some stores and even at the national museum cafe, you can hear Christmas music playing over the intercom. The holiday doesn't have any religious significance to most of them, I guess they just like the pretty decorations!
This is one of my classrooms. Notice the sweatsuit uniforms, the stacks of books on the desks, and the "Merry Christmas!" sign at the front of the room :)
Another picture of the classroom. Notice the books stacked on the desk and the Christmas tree!
Students also wear uniforms here. The colors are gray and maroon and the uniforms are sweatsuits. Students can wear different pants or different shirts but they must be wearing something BRS-related. It’s a good thing the uniforms are so comfortable with the long days they put in! The students complain about the uniforms though because they think they’re ugly.
This is a boarding school so the students live on campus. There are about 3,000 students here and from my understanding, even the little elementary school students stay here overnight. Most of the students go home on the weekend (the ones that live around here), but the ones that live farther away stay here on the weekends.
You know those straw dispensers in our cafeterias? This is a CHOPSTICK DISPENSER! How cool is that?!
This is my favorite lunch/dinner meal! A bowl of rice and a plate of 2 dishes: 1 is spicy green beans and the other is spicy potatoes. It is SO GOOD!
This is what I eat for breakfast when I don't feel like waking up early to go to the dining hall. A croissant and a can of coffee. I thought that the brown filling was chocolate but it ISN'T! This interesting ingredient actually replaces chocolate in a lot of Chinese treats. Extra points to whoever can tell me what it is and why it is used instead of chocolate! (comment with the answer and I'll tell you in one of the upcoming blogs!)
I also want to mention that for all of us in the group, a lot of the generalizations we had made about Chinese students were shot when we actually observed in the classroom. We had expected that the students would all be sitting up straight, listening to the teacher, taking notes feverishly, have their homework completed, and that we would not have any discipline issues. That is NOT the case! Students in China are just like students in the US, there are lots of students sleeping in class, they talk while the teacher is talking, a lot of them are not taking notes, and actually about 4 out of the 25 students in my first period do their homework. From what I gathered from my discussions with the other NC State students and my own observations, classroom management is pretty much non-existent. Students sleep if they want to sleep, they don't do the classwork if they don't want to do it, and they're free to zone out and the teacher just goes on teaching. It's very different from what I'm used to. But just like our generalization of students does not fit the students in our classes at BRS, we have to be careful to not make a generalization about all Chinese high school students based on what we have observed here. This is a boarding school with long hours, so maybe at the public schools (which have hours that are more comparable to our hours in the States), the students are more awake and engaged and have more time to get their homework done before class.
I'm fitting right in with this hard-working Chinese schedule! I don't have near as much work to do as I did when I student taught in the US, but I have a mountain of odds and ends I have to get done before I come back and graduate. One piece of advice I’ll give to anyone that has the opportunity to travel or study abroad: get your other work done BEFORE you go abroad!! I’ve been working on my edTPA portfolio, the homework and final project for my online class, and my 30-page research paper for the Honors Program while I’m here, so although I'm physically here, I don't feel as mentally "here" as I would be if I didn't have this pile of work. Rather than learning Mandarin, observing other classes, or playing table tennis or badminton with the students after class, like I would if I didn't have all of this work to finish up, I just come back to the room and get back to work on my breaks. I know that I was working all the time during my student teaching in the States and couldn't have gotten all of this done then, so I don’t have any regrets, but I do wish I had less side work to do so I could immerse myself further. But the good news is that I finished edTPA and all of the work for my online class last week, so now I just have to finish up my Honors Capstone paper! Most of what I’m doing is observing my mentor teacher, although I have taught 2 lessons at this point and will teach a few more in the coming weeks.
Is it licorice? I wonder what kind of jobs the students parents have. of the 25 students how many go abroad to study?
Reply
Kallie
4/13/2014 01:20:48 pm
No, not licorice. Red bean! A lot of their parents are business owners but I don't know what their business is. The goal is that all 25 students will go abroad to study at a university but that's not feasible.
Reply
Dad
4/7/2014 10:24:09 am
Hazelnut, since it grows locally (?) and the cocoa bean does not and would be cost-prohibitive to import?
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Sherry
4/8/2014 11:49:49 am
Shawn that is a good guess
Reply
Kallie
4/13/2014 01:21:17 pm
Good guess but no, it's red bean!
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Kat
4/7/2014 10:44:43 am
HNNNNNGH THAT FOOD LOOKS SO GOOD
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Paige Ryan
4/10/2014 10:54:30 pm
is it red bean paste on the crossiant? :)
Reply
Kallie
4/13/2014 01:23:31 pm
Yay! We have a winner!!! You will be duly recognized when I explain it in the next post :) I was really surprised by how little "real" chocolate there is here. It's mostly red bean paste!
Reply
Paige
4/16/2014 11:43:05 pm
Yay :) I've always wanted to try it!
Judy
4/11/2014 05:10:12 am
Hi, Kallie! Hope you don't mind if I chip in. I work with your Dad in CD and he shared your blog - I kept asking about your experiences in China. I have so enjoyed reading your observations and seeing the photos. I spent 8 years in the Far East (Philippines and Malaysia with visits to Singapore and Hong Kong). Many of our family friends were Chinese - Mandarin, Hollien, Amoy, Cantonese. Your vivid descriptions bring back great memories, even though we never had an opportunity to visit China itself. Continue having such wonderful experiences!!
Reply
Kallie
4/13/2014 01:25:19 pm
Hi Judy! I remember you from when I've visited my dad at the office. I don't mind at all if you chip in! Thanks for checking out the blog. That's so neat that you've been able to travel so much! I hope I'll be able to do the same! :)
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Author
My name is Kalavik (Kallie) McNamara and I'm student teaching in Beijing, China for 5 weeks. I'm working to earn licensure to teach Spanish but I will be teaching English here in China! I'm excited to learn about the Chinese culture and the differences and similarities in how education is viewed and carried out.