Happy Note: Why PC should be in China...

The first goal of Peace Corps in China is to teach English to college students who will most likely become English teachers.

One of the Tree House volunteer freshmen student workers told me her happy news.

She had a 20 minute teaching interview with an English language tutoring center for primary students. She said she taught the kids a song that I had taught their freshmen class last semester, "You are my sunshine."

I told her, "Wow that is great! If you get the job and need help lesson planning, come to the Tree House. I can give you suggestions, lend you books and teach you how to plan for a class."

One of the Tree House volunteer junior student workers told me about her homework in her teaching methodology class. They had to lesson plan a 10 minute English warm-up.

The other Tree House workers and I became her students and she practiced being the teacher. She gave us instructions for the warm-up pair-work activity where one student thinks of three things then describes them while the other student guesses.

The student teacher got to see how students responded to her instructions. She realized that maybe she should ask the students to write down the three things first before starting to describe them because it is hard for students to come up with three things right off the top of their heads. Students need some pre-thinking time and need to write them down so they are ready to describe the items. Also, the student teacher realized this activity was not a 10 minute activity and might need to expand it a bit.

In and outside of the classroom, Peace Corps volunteers teach English and teach how to teach English. Students learn songs and different teaching methods. Volunteers expose students to English in a different way than their Chinese teachers and give the students one on one attention.

China asked for English teachers and we are doing our job. This is one reason why we should be in China.