Author: chadwickbaldwin

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About chadwickbaldwin

A Canadian teacher in China

The Start of the New Program.

Daily Life, School One comment

While we are setting up the website, I will be posting APS updates here.

    Last week we completed a wonderful week of APS bonding. The camp theme was outdoor education, but the main focus was getting to know each other. I wanted to have a camp where I could spend time with as many of the APS students to get to know them better. It worked so much better than I thought. There were definitely times when we had communication difficulties, but as a team we worked through that. The students had fun learning about each other, making friends and trying new things. I learned how much fun it was to spend all day with them.

    Our first day we spent the day doing a lot of different activities. We made bracelets to show the students how to follow (complicated) directions, they also learned how to ask for help with this activity. We gave them maps of the school and let them explore the campus looking for things to familiarize themselves with the school grounds. We had teamwork activities in the field to help them work together. The kids had a great time, and were introduced to several of the teachers in the school.

    On our second day we went down to Fangshan. The kids were given the opportunity to kayak. For some this was a scary experience, and they did not want to do this on their own. Others were quite happy in the kayaks, scooting around the lake on their own. I spent the morning riding around with 2 (or 3) students in my kayak. Sometimes we’d have to go out and help tow a kayak out of the grass. But the kids had a wonderful morning, followed by bbq lunch. That afternoon, some of the students were given the chance to rock climb.

    This was followed by alternating days of Field trips and training at school. We went caving, (Spelunking). We entered the caves on our feet, and ended up climbing ropes, and crawling through tiny holes. The students had a great time. We saw bats, and “stone flowers”, and water dripping from the roof. I must admit, that I discovered that I still have “claustrophobia” (fear of enclosed spaces). I didn’t know that I had this, and so it was a bit hard. But In the end I did have a good time.

We also had campsite training. We learned to hunt with a bow and arrow. How to use the sun for telling time, and how to work together. There were times that I could see some of the kids did not understand what was expected, and we had to patiently show them what was needed. (Except during the hunting practice, when I had to run out and carry a student out or the firing-range, because ran out in front of other archers when they were about to shoot…)

One of the parents (Felix’s) made wonderful photo-essays of each day. And I think they are very good to share.

The beginning of a great future!

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The end of the school year is here, and we can now look back at all the great memories we made in grade 1. I had a great time this semester and I hope my students did too. We had Buggy dancing to “There’s a bug in my room”, and Mr. Finn’s River dance tutorial on St. Patrick’s Day. We had Card games, and role-plays, and children trying to hide inside desks. I really enjoyed this year.

At this point we are also granted the opportunity to look at the future, which is awesome. Students plan to go off to enjoy the adventures of summer vacation, making more great memories that we all can share with our friends at ZhongDe in the fall. Summer also bring forth in some an uncertainty about the new school year.

At the end of every year, foreign teachers in the bilingual program are asked by students and parents if they will continue to teach their child (or themselves) in the following year. This is a hard question for us to answer every year, as of course, we would love to continue working with the same children and to help them grow into wonderful people. This is not always possible.

    Every year, the foreign staff expands, and as it does so the school moves us to positions where we can be the most effective. This is very much like schools in western countries. Some of us are our most effective at certain grades, some of us are needed to be moved to other grades or subjects to help guide the new staff as they come into the school. Some of us are asked to guide new programs or activities the school is opening. This gives students the opportunity to learn more about the world they are living in, as they get to have various teachers from different places around the world.

    I loved being in grade 1 class 5, and had a great time with the kids this year. I will still be in the school: to help and watch over the kids as they grow up, and continue to learn. I will still be proud of them, and talk to them in the school. I will, however, be passing the reigns of both English and Math teacher over to one of our other great teachers. I am not 100% sure which lucky teacher it will be, but I know the students will be in for a wonderful grade 2 year.

    I, however, will be back in grade 1 again next year. The school has asked me to help guide the new American Primary School program into fruition, and help it have a successful first year. I am both excited and saddened by this posting. I am saddened because, as with each year I have worked as a Teacher, I must set my students free to fly where they will. Sometimes to watch them grow, sometimes not, as they fly off to other wonderful adventures. I am also excited at the opportunity to try and bring such a new program to a Wonderful School like ZhongDe.

    My door will be open next year, for any students that would like to visit, or need advice. My door will be open for any staff that need the same.

    Have a great summer, and let me know how it was in September.

Chad Baldwin

Home Sweet home

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    We made it. Today Mrs. Baldwin & I moved into our new apartment. We definitely couldn’t have done it without the help of good friends. Before today we were living in the School dormitory, which was really nice, but cramped. You can imagine a family of four living in a small bachelor pad with no kitchen. Technically there was a kitchen, upstairs in the common room, but it felt a bit awkward for us to cook for our family when the other “dormies” (Dormitory Roomies) needed it for themselves.

    The first obstacle we faced was deciding when to move out. In China it is not normal to pay rent monthly. You typically pay rent quarterly, semi-annually or annually. Most people pay quarterly. The problem we were trying to avoid, but didn’t, was if we move out too early, then rent month comes in the middle of Summer Vacation. Financially this is not a problem, however, this summer we are traveling, and we didn’t want the landlord coming while we were away to collect rent.

We went to a real estate agent nearby, as in China they are the ones who rent out properties. Property owners rent their homes to these agents, who then lease them to others. Anyways without a clear goal of when we wanted to move we told the first agent we went to that we wanted to move in May. This agent, we’ll call him Bob, took us for a walk around the area. We just kind of sauntered around to a couple places, and talked it was peaceful. We saw 1 shoebox sized place, and 1 nice place. We exchanged Wechat (Chinese Messenger/ Social Media) information and used that to talk. Wechat has a built in Text translator. After the places Bob showed us, we said ado and went off to have ice-cream and a date day.

It took us a while before we really started looking, Irish and the kids were itching to get out of the dorm, it just wasn’t enough space. So Irish and I continued the search. We sent a message to Bob, to see if he had any new places to show us. He didn’t respond. So we went to another agency, where all the men tried politely not to talk to us and kept pushing the lady agents to talk to us. For about 30 minutes another customer translated for us what we were looking for. The thing is, if any of them had tried to talk to us, my Chinese listening skills are ok, and worst case scenario, we could use a translator program like Google Translate. They were just too terrified to try.

Eventually a lady arrived back at work and she wasn’t afraid to deal with us. She didn’t speak much English, but was not scared of us so this was a good start. We’ll call her Jenny. Jenny showed us a couple places on her computer and asked if we’d like to go see the real places, which of course we did. So Jenny took us out, ordered an Uber-like taxi service and we traveled. Now the first place was supposed to be near the local subway, which is a 15 minute walk to the school I work at. It wasn’t. It would have taken 45 minutes to walk it with the kids. Yes there were buses nearby, and yes the apartment was really nice. The owner made us wait about 20 minutes, while he bought beer, before letting us see his place. He offered me a beer, but I turned him down, as I don’t drink.

Jenny took us to a couple other places, each a bit far from the area we wanted, and close to the limit of what we wanted to pay. (Sometimes over). 1 place had no elevator, but was on the 5th floor. 1 place had someone living in it. She claimed he was moving out the next day, but nothing was packed, and he had running machines and other heavy equipment in there, so I got the impression they were evicting him. We asked Jenny if she had anything in specific buildings nearby, and she said that they didn’t because those building were too old and wouldn’t suit our needs. We thanked Jenny and went for lunch.

At this point we decided to just drop by Bob’s office. His company had helped some friends in the past, and we really liked him. It turned out Bob was out of the city but had asked his friend Paul to help us out. Paul told us about a couple places (Translator programs and my broken Chinese). So we hopped on his and his partner’s motorcycles and zoomed off to see the first place. No helmets, and this bothered me a little but terrified Irish. We came to the first apartment, right where we had asked Jenny earlier today. Nice place, but the kitchen was a bit scary.

So Paul and his partners got us back on the motorcycles, and drove us a bit farther away. This apartment was practically perfect, except it was again too far from the school. Now, to clarify, our concern with the distance is not because I’m too lazy to take a bus. We wanted a place nearby because we wanted the kids to be able to walk to school in the morning, and walk home with Irish in the afternoon. So we went back to Paul’s Office. Paul asked us about what we wanted, and we explained that he only problem with the first place was the kitchen, and he promised to have that fixed up for us.

So here we are just having moved in across the street from work, in the building that Paul found us, and we discover that my daughter’s classmate is in our building. Two of my co-workers are also in our building. The kids now have their own bedroom for the first time in 20 months, and I can finally share a bed with my wife….