Manha de Carnaval

It will be the rare person indeed who gets this song reference – without help, of course.  (Anyone can look it up.)  Let me know if you think you’ve got it…or if you give up frustratingly.

I’ve been meaning to write a bit about what I actually do, but I had been waiting until things settle down so I actually knew what I’m supposed to be doing.  Guess that’s not gonna happen, so I’ll start this now, knowing it’ll have to continue as I go.  For this installment, at least, I’ll refrain from being too flippant for the sake of clarity.

I now have three titles that reflect three different sets of activities and responsibilities:  Special Adviser to the Principal, Foreign Director of the Early Development (aka GT) Program, and Academic Principal of a new science-magnet school they’re building in Princeton, NJ.  Lots to do.

For my first 2 months here I visited many classes, observing teachers and students, taking notes on teaching style, student behavior, etc.  Here’s Mi Qi teaching physics.

He’s a very popular teacher, and after every class he is surrounded by students wanting to know more.

I also have meetings occasionally with the principal or assistant principals, mostly on academic planning stuff, though it varies a bit.

When there’s a VIP around, I’m often called to participate in whatever event that has been arranged, usually a meeting then dinner.  This is the most boring part of my job, but my experience as a lobbyist has rendered me fairly proficient at small talk.  (But you all know how I hate that stuff.)

I go with a bunch of teachers to nearby universities to interview candidates for teacher jobs.  Here’s the group at Tsinghua University.

I help the student team that’s working on fMRI scan interpretation.   Here they are at Peking University receiving instructions from one of the grad students.  This little room holds 7 grad students.

And here we (fMRI team and I) are at lunch at my favorite noodle place around the corner.

I work with individual teachers on how to hold class discussions.  I give them interesting papers relating to the topic of the week, explain to the teacher how to elicit answers and opinions from students, and sit in on the discussions to help out if needed.  Here’s an IB Biology class discussing one of my favorite papers, on unequal fidelity in DNA replication.

Recently I gave a 1-hour lecture to the Neuroscience Club on Music and the Brain.

There was a little confusion at the beginning because the Club’s leaders forgot to officially sign up for the lecture room, and the head of the English Dept. was scheduled to give a test in there.  They asked us to move to another room, but I protested that it took us 30 minutes to set up the sound and visual projection.  I went up to the English Dept. office to protest and, with the help of another American teacher who speaks excellent Chinese, they eventually decided to move the test to the other room.  Here I am with the Club leaders who invited me to speak.

If there’s an event on the front circle, I usually attend, cheering on the students.  Here the middle school students are holding a book sale; they brought already read and unneeded books from home and sell them to other students to raise money for their specific class.  This was a very popular event.

I occasionally advise the FLL Lego team on their efforts to win a robotics and service contest.  Here are 2 of the 5 robot practice tables they have.

This school is the focal point for teacher training in China, and educators are constantly coming and going for 1-week periods for different types of training.  I’m not really sure what they get in all the Chinese-only meetings, but often there’s a plenary session.  I give speeches at these sessions, usually on teaching methodology and philosophy.  As expected, I get rave reviews.  A couple weeks ago I spoke to about 80 principals from Shanghai.  There were a lot of students present, also, and during the break I was surrounded by students wanting to know how they could get into classes where they would have the opportunity to demonstrate creative thinking.  It’s almost like the system has a strangle-hold on the minds of the students.  My job, at least partly, is to try to find a way to loosen that hold.

So, after accumulating a lot of ideas from my class observations and small meetings with teachers and students, I got together with my team consisting of Mi Qi (physics teacher), Wang Zhipeng (biology teacher), and Tong Jing (English teacher), and we created this overall plan for high school science research, which includes a new course in Science Communication for 8^th graders.

Our plan was accepted by the powers, so we presented it to the 60 GT teachers last Sunday at an all-day meeting.  It included a lot about teaching methodology, teacher-student interaction, and other controversial (at least here) stuff.  They seemed to like it, and subsequent comments were positive.  One of the most special was that they’ve wanted to do something like this for a long time but no one took the lead.

Our next step is to complete our action plan for implementing the changes.  This will be done, translated, and submitted before I leave next week for the U.S.

OK, now that you have the gist of what I do here, I can throw out little tidbits as my life here moves on.  They won’t come very often, however, as I prefer to write about the societal aspects of my observations.

Hot August Night

That song is dedicated to Alicia F., whose husband Gary died a few years ago.

Well, it’s not August and it’s not night (I’m writing this at 8 a.m. Sunday) and it’s not really hot, but good news for all of you who’ve been worried sick about my comfort in this apartment:  THEY TURNED THE HEAT ON!!  There’s nothing like moving to another culture to drive home the adage “Everything’s relevant.”  Things that you take for granted (which is practically everything we have in America) suddenly stands out in its absence elsewhere – little things like heat.

Speaking of everything being relevant, the heat in the building is modest.  But compared to what it was, it’s wonderful.  Maybe this is a secret ploy of the government:  withhold the heat from the public for a while so they (1) really appreciate it when it comes on, and (2) they don’t complain that it should be warmer.  [Government guys:  I’m just kidding, so please don’t block my email any further than you already have.]

I was going to write about the heat last night but I got distracted.  It was a drizzly day, and after lunch I decided to go grocery shopping, opting for this upscale, Harris Tweeter-type place nearby as opposed to my usual downscale Carrefour.  I was taken there once my first week but hadn’t been back; still I was pretty sure I could find it.  I found the building OK (Modern Plaza) but once inside couldn’t find the grocery.  The first floor is full of high-end perfume and watch kiosks – you know the kind of place.  I wandered around in my low-end coat with my baseball cap and 2-day beard, accumulating interesting gazes.

After exhausting the first floor, where I had been reasonably sure it was, I took the escalator to the second floor.  Amazingly, there were more watch and perfume places, and the clientele consisted of high-end women in their high-end sweaters.  China’s top 1%.  I strolled among these kiosks, resigned to having to back to Carrefour (6 very long blocks away) when I spied a little glass-enclosed booth that said “English Information” and a bunch of other stuff in Chinese.

I stopped at the booth and asked them where the grocery was and the two girls just looked at me quizzically.  I mimed “eating” to represent food to one of them, and she was about to guide me to a restaurant when I supplemented it with more miming indicating that I wanted a store where I could buy food, not a restaurant.  Quizzical looks again.  I pointed to the word “English” and they indicated I should wait for a minute.  Finally, a girl came who spoke excellent English and guided me to the grocery – in the basement.

I spent at least an hour wandering leisurely up and down the aisles, marveling at the unusual, and unrecognizable, things for sale, and at the high prices of the recognizable things.  Knowing that I would eventually have to make dinner for someone, I thought I’d better practice.  Cooking in my apartment bears little resemblance to cooking in my kitchen in Fairfax Station, and thus I knew it was wise to start simple.

Chicken piccata.  All you need are some chicken breasts, flour, lemon juice, and some seasonings.  But try as I might, walking up and down the aisles, repeatedly looking at all the small jars and other small containers, I could find no capers.  (I was told later in the day by a friend that I’d have to go to a part of Beijing populated with more foreigners to find things like that.)  No shallots, either, but I had an onion and some garlic.  I found the flour aisle where there was Chinese flour for $1.50 and imported flour for $6.00.  Chinese flour won.  There was no canned chicken broth or bouillon cubes, but after quite a bit of searching, I found something that seemed to be “chicken powder.”

At 6:00 p.m. yesterday I started.  Everything takes longer here.  I had to squeeze the lemons by hand (instead of using my beautiful, yellow lemon squeezer I have at home), then, with a fork, I had to find all the lemon seeds because I don’t have a small strainer.  More complaints:  (1) My frying pan will hold only 2 chicken breasts at a time; (2) I have no oven to keep things warm as I cook other things; (3) I have limited seasonings.

Still, I went ahead and cooked dinner the best I could.  A week earlier all teachers were given about 10 pounds of rice, so I decided to make rice.  Two interesting aspects to this task.  First, the rice was a sticky rice, not the dry rice we’re used to in the US (except, of course, for sushi).  The second aspect concerns the cooking of this rice.  In the US, every rice I’ve come across requires about 2 cups of water for every cup of rice.  When I followed this procedure with this rice, I found that when the rice was cooked, lots of water remained in the pan:  this rice is much less dehydrated than the rice I’ve come across in the rest of my life.

By the time I was done with the chicken piccata, I didn’t have the umph to prepare the salad I had intended, so I ended up eating both chicken breasts and some of the rice.

The best news is that I had a bottle of red wine I picked up in October.  After I was well on my way to finishing half the bottle, the food tasted quite good.

I left the rice out to dry and made fried rice the next day.  That was pretty good, too.

* * * * *

I wrote most of the above on Nov. 11, but have been swamped since then and didn’t have the time until now to finish and post it.  I hope some of you have missed me.  More soon.

Snow Falling on Cedars

When Mi Qi told me on Friday that we might see snow on Sunday, I thought he was joking.  If I had known it would get this cold and cruddy and that I’d have no heat in my apartment, I might have stayed in Fairfax Station.  Guess I’m spoiled like the rest of you, because the Chinese seem perfectly fine with all of this.

What Did You Learn in School Today, Dear Little Boys of Mine? Part 2

I’m sorry I can’t show you lots of pictures of my students.  Don’t want to get into trouble this early.  Similarly, this post will be a little thinner than some of you would like.  I’ll talk a bit more about my own class in another post, so for now, let me just give you a few thoughts about the academics here, as I promised.

It is indeed a different world.  The focus is certainly on exams, and next week the entire school goes through mid-terms in all subjects.  It’s like freshman year in college.  They’re spending all their time on studying for these exams.

On the one hand, you could say that they work very hard.  Every evening there are optional study halls from 6:30-9:30 (or thereabouts), and they’re packed.  On the other hand, I’m not sure they’re spending their time as wisely as they can – or should.

One of the basic differences between education here and at TJ is that students here study at home what they heard for the first time in class.  They are not given pre-lecture or pre-discussion assignments and thus come to class with a blank slate.  The teacher (who is usually very good) lectures for 40-45 minutes while some students take notes.  Others don’t.  Some sleep.  I believe everything the teacher is telling them is in the nationally approved text, which is about a ½ inch thick, soft-cover book.

I regret that I can’t give you anything close to my full impressions and opinions on this system at this time.  I can tell you that I was brought here with the goal to help modify the current teaching styles with an aim toward increasing the creative thinking of these students.  This is no small task.  It’s not a matter of simply introducing a few Socratic discussions into the current classes.  As I discussed in a speech to 80 principals from Shanghai last week, teachers and students must have a totally different approach to their classes.  Some of the modifications required include (1) students preparing for a lecture/discussion ahead of time and not relying on teachers to spoon-feed them the material, (2) students learning how to teach themselves and each other, and not rely so completely on teachers for answers to every little question, (3) teachers leading students to answers through questions, and (4) teachers requiring students to demonstrate creative thinking in class.  There’s much more, but those 4 things alone may be more than I can accomplish in 1 year.  We’ll see.

At the moment, the driver of the whole system is still the National College Entrance Exam.  This in turn is a result of the philosophy of “equity,” that everyone in China should have the same educational opportunity.  I must admit that I haven’t had many discussions about how that philosophy, an admirable one, is implemented, and thus I can’t speak authoritatively on it at this time.

On the bright side, the students themselves seem ready and anxious for a change, for when given the opportunity to break out of the mold, they do so quickly (especially the younger ones) and vigorously, jumping at the chance to express themselves.

Ghost Riders in the Sky

When I left high school for college, my first two roommates were high school friends who turned into drug addicts.  The second year I had two other roommates:  one was Mike something who always bragged about his success with women, and the other was a Chinese guy from Oakland named something Chung.

Something Chung is memorable for two reasons:  (1) at a dinner at his parents’ home in Oakland one night, he was the first one I’ve ever observed actually eat a complete chicken leg – meat, fat, cartilage, and bone; and (2) after we’d wash our clothes together at the neighborhood Laundromat, we’d go home and fold them…at which time he’d invariably accuse me of stealing one of his socks.  I was indeed quite poor in those days, consuming a lot of powdered milk and powdered potatoes.  I even had a friend, Ray Z., who’d come over and nibble on my dog’s Gravy Train.  But even those dire circumstances could not compel me to steal one sock.  I swear!

Below you see a picture of 1 sock on a chair.  Note that there is definitely only 1 sock – and that the second is NOT on my foot.

Today I washed dark clothes and upon emptying the washer onto my bed in preparation for hanging on the veranda (with rain dripping in), I discovered a gray sock was missing.  I’ve searched everywhere:  the washer, the clothes basket, under the washer, under the bed, the washer again.  No luck.  I’m fairly sure it’s still in the apartment, as I didn’t leave for any reason between the time I put 2 socks (I think) into the washer and removed only 1 sock (I’m certain).

Something Chung:  Have you come back to haunt me?

Some Like It Hot

It’s an ugly morning here in Beijing.  Saturday, 10 a.m., 46 deg., and it’s supposed to rain today and maybe snow tomorrow.

I’m cold.  No heat in dorm yet.  Maybe another week.  It didn’t come on at the  beginning of Nov. as I had hoped and expected.  But other residents tell me that when it comes on I won’t notice it much anyway.  Yesterday I broke down and went to Carrefour to buy a space heater.  Seems like there’s a big market for them because they had 10-15 different models ranging from $30-$200.

Frugal (yes “frugal,” B.) being that I am, I decided on the small $30 one for under my desk to keep my feet warm.

The cup is there to give you a sense of the size.  Yes, the cup has teddy bears on it.  No, I didn’t buy this; it was part of the setup when I arrived.

Heater is working!  My feet are warm – at least warmer than they’d be if they weren’t near the heater.  But of course, now I’m not particularly inclined to leave my desk, which has the only warm spot in the apartment.

Speaking of heat, I’m not sure I told you about the time one of my students tried to murder me.  I’ve been meaning to, so if I already have, just skip the next few paragraphs.  I was in Beijing in July 2011 to speak to the teachers of this school, and one of my beloved students (CY) was with me to translate and generally help out explaining things.  She did a great job, incidentally.

One evening we were on our own for dinner and we happened on a place called Mr. G’s in one of the many malls hereabouts.  It’s a dry pot place where you walk along and pick out the vegetables and meats you want in your dish, then arrive at the register to pay where they ask you how spicy you want it.  CY turned to me and asked me how spicy I’d like it, and I, thinking in American, said I like food only medium spicy.  So CY dutifully told the register guy we’d like it “medium.”

We found an empty table, and when our food arrived (all the stuff together in a big metal bowl with some sauce), I dove in – well, as much as one can dive in with only a pair of chopsticks.  I put this single batch of noodles and vegetables into my mouth, chewed a couple times, then swallowed.  I know you’re gonna think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not:  I truly was thinking I could die.  I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t speak, all I could do is sit there, turn red and sweaty, and worry that my heart was about to stop.  CY took one look at me, got worried, and asked if I needed some water.  I nodded vigorously and she took off in a hurry.  I concentrated on staying alive.

They didn’t have water at the restaurant, so CY raced outside to a kiosk.  I watched her anxiously as the register girl took her time giving CY her change.  CY returned with a bottle and I drank 16 oz. in one gulp (OK, maybe a little exaggeration there).

Needless to say, I survived.  It turns out that Mr. G’s has 5 different levels of spiciness, and “medium” was second from the top!  How, and, more importantly, why these people eat this stuff is beyond me.

As an aside, the following week I went to Korea where again I was tead and dined (as opposed to wined and dined).  Some of the food there was very hot, too, and one day I asked my hostess if she liked this spicy food.  She laughed and said no, she doesn’t eat it; only male Koreans eat the very spicy food.  Some kind of macho thing, she thought.

OK, so back to the present.  Last night Tong Jing and I went for dinner and decided to go to a dry pot place.  Nice place.  Crowded.  We got the last table.  Friday night is the big night for the 20-30 kids to do the town.  We picked our vegetables and she asked me how spicy I wanted it.  Having the memory – and the body – of an elephant (do elephants really have good memories?), I said non-spicy.  The waitress took off.

I asked Tong Jing how many levels of spiciness the place had, and she said 6.  In response to my next question, she said that the level of spiciness just above non-spicy was “tiny-bit spicy.”  I offered to change to that level, and she agreed and raced to catch waitress.  The food came, and while I didn’t need to frantically gesture for her to rush out and get water, it was significantly spicy – spicy enough that I didn’t really enjoy the wonderful mushrooms, lotus root, some other root, still another root, and seaweed in the pot.  The enoki mushrooms, due to their shape, held onto the peppercorns particularly tenaciously.

The end result of last night’s dinner is that I’ve decided to be an unabashed wimp and always ask for non-spicy, regardless of the context.

Well, it seems I’ve once again, despite mighty efforts against, gravitated back to talking about food.  So let me just finish this story off by going out on a limb:  China has more variety in its cuisine than any other country on Earth.  The only country that may (only MAY) give it a run for its money is Thailand, but I haven’t been there to experiment.  MY money is still on China.  Anyone want to challenge me on this?