Boys and Girls

So, for those of you who may not be aware, I teach Chinese children how to prepare for a complex, international marketplace in which an understanding of English is fundamental to growing your business in an ever-changing global economy. HAHAHAHA!!! What I really do is teach Chinese students in 8th grade, 7th grade and kindergarten oral English, which means we mainly play a lot of games to try to get them over their shyness. Please, take some time to shower me with pity for the arduous life that I lead.

Now, before coming to China I never taught children in a grade lower than 9th, and few of those at that. So, if this post suffers from a basic ignorance of universal middle school and junior high behavior, please feel free to offer any corrections needed. At any rate, as the title of this post indicates, this is about boys and girls. I may not know that much about girls, apart from what I learned on Kindergarten Cop, but after thirty-three years I've learned to comfortably communicate with the female species. I know that I was quite shy when I was around 13 or 14 years old, but even then I don't remember a feeling of abject terror when confronted with the possibility of having a conversation with a girl. I tell you this because the reaction of a 7th or 8th grade Chinese student in the face of the challenge of speaking to a student of the same age of the opposite sex is downright priceless!

It is a very common occurrence for me to begin a class by having my students ask each other random questions out loud in English. Typically, the first time that I introduce this activity I will start with the student in the front desk on one side of the room, and have that student question the student behind them, snaking our way through the entire class. At times I like to subtly change the format by limiting the types of questions, adding to the number of questions or having the students choose randomly the student in the class that they would like to question. And now the fun begins!

Given the choice a male student will select another male student and a female student will choose another female student to question 99% of the time. By the way, 60% of the time my randomly generated statistics are correct 100% of the time. While I find this phenomena among my students interesting to observe, I also find that it gets a bit monotonous at times and doesn't foster the idea of a completely cooperative learning environment. I am also a bit of a sadist as a teacher. So, I consider it fun to allow this heterogeneous line of questioning to continue through around 6 or 7 similarly-sexed students and then throw a wrench into the works. I then announce that boy students must now question girl students and vice-versa. (spell check tells me I made a mistake on vice-versa. I think spell check is wrong, but if someone knows differently please let me know.)

Now, my announcement of the changing of the rules is usually met by clapping, cheering, screaming, peals of laughter and a chorus of "ohhh's." Well, at least those are the reactions from the other students that are not the boy or girl that I just stopped to inform that they must now pick someone of the opposite sex. The amazingly sad look of defeat and forlorn bewilderment akin to a child who has been told that they can't have the puppy that they just fell in love with is priceless. Remember, I'm a little sadistic as a teacher. What's even greater is that often the line of questioning can turn into, "What boy do you like?", "What girl do you like?", "Do you like me?", "Who is the most beautiful/handsome student in the class?". You should understand that if put to the test of admitting to "liking" another student a Chinese child would rather die than admit to it, even if the aforementioned other student is in the same room. Therefore, a student will choose to say, "No, I don't like him/her." in the face of the questioning. Add to the situation the fact that nearly every new choice of girl or boy to question is met with the same reactions as my game-changing announcement, it's just about the most fun that you can have teaching in China.

So, there you go. Boy/Girl interactions in China. See you next time. Rangers rule, by the way!