Teaching at Jiaoda

We have now been in the harness of teaching for three weeks for me and two for John, since the grad students didn't begin until a week after the rest of us started teaching. I need to return to the topic of our living quarters but will save that for another entry and instead will first tell you of JiaoDa, the nickname for Xi'an Jiaotong University. This is a top ranking Chinese University and the students who attend here are cream of the crop. It is ranked 12th among the 1000s of Chinese universities and the students are very aware that they are privileged to be here. We feel that we are privileged to be here too. We are especially grateful that we are so close to campus, living in what is essentially campus housing. Many of our fellow teachers in Xi'an who are at other universities spend nearly an hour on a bus getting to and from their campus classrooms.

Our specific teaching assignments include my two junior English writing classes and four sections of sophomore oral English. All my students are English majors and their language ability is pretty good. I'd love to have one of them in my back pocket everywhere I go:). John has one preparation with four sections of English writing for graduate students. He is a busy boy! We have been enormously grateful for a colleague with some 30 years EFL experience here from the University of Washington. She teaches the same class John does and has been wonderful to share with. She and I also help one another with the oral class ideas. We had a bit of a lift yesterday when Margy, who has been in China on two other stints and who speaks a smattering of Chinese, was chatting with the handyman who does the repairs (frequently needed) on our apartments told her that the word was out from the students that the three of us were wonderful teachers! That was a bit of cheer in our day. We had some inkling that we were being viewed positively since John keeps having students trying to sit in on or add his sections, which are all ready full to bursting, and I have had a growing number of visiting professors from another university taking up residency in the back of one of my sections of oral English. We are trying to do our best to make a positive difference and having a marvelous experience in the process.