Warm, muggy, humid days have arrived in Beilun!

Today's weather forecast (for the Ningbo area;
Beilun's weather is always slightly different because
we're closer to the coast/port; so we get more fog/humidity)

In the last week, temps have been rising (constantly above 70ºF now, even at night; average of high 70s-mid 80s in the last few days), which isn't especially hot, but the muggy weather is setting in. So the air feels thick and the winds are warmer (thankfully there usually is a breeze, though right now it is rather still outside, as a storm is approaching). It's pretty muggy when it's raining, or right after it's rained, obviously.

Anyway,  I have had my classroom windows open in the last couple weeks as weather's been warming up (which doesn't keep the gnats or flies or construction noises or rain or smells of pesticides out). Being on the top floor of the building (heat rises!), my room is usually one of the warmer ones on campus (and the colder, less insulated one in the winter, but I've already been over that). For a room that is made of windows--nearly 1/3 of my classroom "walls" are actually glass windows--it is a shame that only two of the smaller ones open, and the "window screens" don't fit, or have holes in them, completely defeating the purpose of keeping out insects. TIC. The little ventilation provided from the open windows does almost zilch, even when my classroom door is open to create a cross breeze.

AirCon unit that my Elves labeled when we
had a sight-word vocab contest a while back.
(EVERYTHING in my classroom is now labeled)

Therefore, as my first period class of third-grade Elves came in today, literally dripping with sweat, mopping their brows with tissues, I decided it was finally time to turn on the AirCon unit (the one that doubles as a "heater" during the winter, when the temps were below freezing for weeks on end, and I needed to give out handwarmers to my students then...). I set it to 24ºC (which would theoretically cool the room to 75ºF). The kids loved the almost-instantaneous ice box, as we pulled the window shades down and worked on our "words with silent letters" projected-activities on the whiteboard. (Honestly, I've been loving the warmer, more humid environment in my classroom, and have protested using the-box-of-filtered-air for over the last month, with the exception of maybe a cold, rainy morning or two at the start of April.

At the end of class when it was time to line up, I had them order themselves by most number of tissues used to least; Elf #1: six tissues (very active, normally sweaty little munchkin), Elf #2: four tissues (very tall, active, and frequently sweaty munchkin), Elf #3: two tissues (munchkin with sneezy allergies and sweaty), Elf #4: zero tissues (a petite little Korean munchkin who I don't think I've ever seen so much of a glisten or a bead of sweat from).

I'm sure you wanted to know those details. But such is life in the encroaching season of Humidity...

Happy Mother's Day!

I've sent this to my mother, and I'm hoping that she will have viewed it by now. If not, then hopefully you're seeing it here on my blog, Moo-Ma! 

It's "Untitled" because this is my first "Prezi" and I didn't know how to go back and rename it (or even name it to begin with, for that matter). But really, it should be something obvious, such as, "Happy Mother's Day 2013, from your Eldest Progeny" or of a similar nature.

Lining up

Each time my grade 3 elves (how Kari and I affectionately refer to our ELL students) walk to/from their home room classroom to my ELL room (a walk from the second to third floors of our main ed building), I have the four of them order themselves in line by some creative patterning. By instructing them to line up in a specific order, we eliminate the issue of unfairness, pushiness, or favoritism when deciding who gets to stand in whatever position he/she desires on any given day. Furthermore, I also use the line up time as an opportunity to either get their sillies out, exercise their creativity, or also practice new vocabulary and critical thinking skills for ordering and organizational patterns (what's length, height, alphabetical order, and how do we determine degrees of distinguishing placement or position in the 4-person line?). Sometimes I think of a line-up rule, and some days I let the kids invent the ordering pattern. 

So far, we gave tried arrangements by: height, alphabetical order, birthdate, ROYGBIV rainbow-color-order based on any particular item of clothing, length of hair, scale of shiny to dull shoes (on a day when we had been studying the -SH- digraph (sound pronunciation) and shiny shoes were key vocabulary words in a read aloud acidity we had been working on), and the list goes on. 

Today we were trying and trying to think of something, and talking about what to measure (part of their geometry unit), so we lined up by length of nose. (See photo.) The elf with the shortest nose stood in front, sequentially progressing up to the elf with the longest nose. Though my nose length was not recorded, because they insist I march alongside them (which ultimately is good for monitoring behavioral issues anyway), I am certain I would have been at the back of the line, probably registering over 5cm in length. (5cm is a long nose for a very short elf!)

Whiteboard quick list for line up

Jetterz

Our dog is so entertaining. So I wanted to share. Enjoy.

If the embedded YouTube video doesn't play for some reason, here's the link. (I had to upload it to YouTube because the vid was too big to embed directly into my blogpost.)

May Day

May Day apparently is the equivalent of Chinese Labor Day, coinciding with "International Workers Day," I think. Ironically, people have to make up those work days the weekend prior to the mid-week holiday. So most everyone worked or had school/classes on Saturday and Sunday, in order to get Monday-Wednesday off. Cool. I'm befuddled as to why they replace weekends with work, in order to be able to later take a holiday to celebrate "labour"...?

But our school doesn't do that. As an international school on American curriculum and a more "westernized" scheduled school year, we don't get the whole observance off. Just Wednesday, the actual Chinese holiday. Because otherwise, heaven forbid, they'd have to pay teachers double (or triple) the normal salary rate, for working on a national holiday. I'd be down. Then we wouldn't have this awkward mid-week day off, totally obstructing the A-B-A-B-C day schedule that's in place at our school. It really is so inconvenient for lesson planning! (but then again, we've had a number of weeks in the last quarter when we ended the week on an A day, so the B day students missed class. Maybe it all evens out in the end?!). 

Blue dot: where we ended up,
out in the glorious farmland boonies
Beilun: where we live
(I live about where the
boxed-X looking character is)

Whatevs. I went for a bike ride at 8am this morning, enjoying the breeze and some sunshine, in the cool morning rays. I've included in this blog post, for your viewing pleasure, some photos that I snapped on my iPhone along the ride. 

Julie on her bike out in the irrigated/swampy farmlands
There were a lot of flower starts being cultivated in this area

Julie pedals behind me along a vineyard road;
we had just passed through one of the many
archways/gates that are so common in China

Scenery along the way

Bu hao tourist "reception" center.
No reception whatsoever. Just old men smoking inside at
a table, walls barren and stained with mold and mildew.

Drying what appeared to be either fertilizer
or feed for livestock...
but maybe it was people food.
I didn't know who to ask at the time.
...Anyone know?

Girls on holiday from school, walking the streets we biked

Fireworks continue, around these May Day celebrations. More frequently, in grander effect. This holiday week, for which most Chinese have had the first few days of the week off, has been filled with the familiar, booming sounds of fireworks, in exchange for the usual construction sounds. Well, to be perfectly honest, some of the construction sounds still persist, but the drilling overhead in our apartment has been put on pause, thankfully! (I thought Kari banging on the door on Tuesday morning at 6am was just construction, as opposed to signaling me that she'd left her keys inside!)

When I got back from my bike ride with Robbie and Julie, sweaty yet refreshed from the morning outing, I made brunch and Skyped with the sisters, which is something that can't usually happen at this time on a weekday due to the 13-(Chicago) or 15-(OR/WA) hour time-difference (it was earlierin the night for them, so not as inconvenient!).

View from the balcony, on this beautiful (holi)day. As you can see, indicated by the line of parked cars along the road, the Chinese who have the day off have come to recreate in the park across the street from our apartment,
flying kites, setting off fireworks, catching tadpoles and polliwogs, and eating strange meats from vendors,
probably contracting the bird flu (just kidding).

Restraining Jett from devouring FuFu (yes, he's a boy)

Now, I'm over at Kate's house, sunbathing with her on her little balcony-patio. She's been puppy sitting a friend's poor-excuse-for-a-dog (I'm sorry if I offend those of you who have burrito-sized animals as pets that some of us see as rats-even smaller than cats- instead of true DOGS.) Kari brought Jett over, the dogs socialized (which consisted of Jett trying to eat Fufu, and us playing interference between Jett's massive paws and Fufu's tiny... well, tiny everything. Kate left on a bike ride now, so I'm finally just about to sit down to do some grading of projects (that would otherwise not get graded at school; too many interruptions). In the sun. On Kate's balcony-patio-porch-deck thingie. Lovely way to get some grading done!

Jett observes the world below us, entertained by passersby and holiday activity.
I need to get back to grading now.

P.S. Sorry I lost myself in those tangental parenthetical ramblings... I have now, much later, realized my poor grammatical structure!

Technological Overload

Shekou International School's elementary school campus,
where the ACAMIS EAL conference was hosted this weekend.

I've gone on sensory overload... I overdosed on technology this weekend!

Where it's totally appropriate

to be on your devices and electronics

while the keynote speaker presents:

at a weekend-long technological

professional development conference

At first, during the opening with the keynote speaker, Jill Bromenshenkel, I was just overwhelmed by the intensity and sheer quantity of technology and apps for everything; and my school doesn’t even have functional computer hardware, software, or current technological equipment, let alone functional internet on a day-to-day basis that would enable us to access these resources! 

I felt defeated and overwhelmed. I didn’t know how to Tweet (and the effectiveness of Twitter as an educational resource and professional networking was an essential component that was pushed at this conference). I couldn’t keep up with multitasking with “backchatting” on the live feed that was up on the screen behind the keynote speaker, nor did I understand half of the buzzwords that were flying around the room, amongst fellow ELL and international school teaching colleagues. Then they started talking about the Aurasma app and its image-related video "auras" (Harry Potter-esque graphics that magically come alive, with the implementation of visual triggers, programmed technologically and viewed with the assistance of an iPad or iPhone). These things do exist in 21st century real life!

But alas, by that afternoon I had discovered that I wasn’t alone in my oblivion. Many of my fellow conference attendees were just as lost and overwhelmed as I! While curious about figuring out many of the new apps and trying to keep up with the rapidly-developing technology of this age, I preferred to go to workshops that pertained to strategies for differentiated teaching to ELLs: reading/writing techniques and various productive, efficient, and effective teaching processes (now called "Protocols," apparently, according to the School Reform Initiative (SRI) lexicon). I came away with several ideas, inspired, and optimistic about room for growth in my classroom, as well as with practical tools and links to further resources. I may not have iPads and such for my class, but I have my iPhone and MacBook Pro to investigate and prep awesome lessons!

Wish I could transfer knowledge to my "elves" this way in ELL class...

Some images were shared over the weekend included the following 1899 predictions of the year 2000 (by Jean-Marc Côté and other French artists). I think it's an interesting depiction of 'constrained realities,' but also proof that if something can be imagined, it is likely inventible these days. Check out more at these links, if you're interested: 

1. What people in 1899 thought the world would look like in 2000.

2. France in the year 2000.

Funny that they thought postal mail would be delivered via air...
but couldn't imagine anything like EMAIL or all the virtual comm we have today!

Don't we have something like this... I think it's called cloning and GMOs?

I was hesitant to get super involved and networked into the international teaching/ELL community, just because I don't see myself doing this sort of work long-term. I don't have ambitions to become/stay a teacher by profession (within international or US-domestic contexts). I am not a certificated teacher. I just have my Teaching ELL/ESL degree from undergrad studies. I concede that, yes, I am an educator. I do love to teach, but with more exposure to the international teaching circuit, I'm made more and more aware of the politics implicated in the system. I'm not sure I would want to involve myself in international teaching for the rest of my life. But of course, I need not make such decisions now. And I feel more aware of the way other schools operate, and that reassures me that our school is not the only one with issues. 

In the eSpace room: walls are painted with whiteboard paint;
and wifi connects devices to project images from any device
Bean bag chairs are the comfy way to work.
Shekou International School's facilities were wonderful!

All said and done, in addition to dozens of new apps that clutter my iPhone screen, I did also jump on the Twitter bandwagon... tentatively and hesitantly, but for professional reasons. (I still don't want to be glued to the screen every time somebody updates, and I'd rather get my news from the bbc.com every morning still, not from Tweets.) Check me out: @laralichten. 

And, just as a reminder, since many of you are already aware, I'm also on Instagram (username: lara_lichten / screen name: laramarielichten), photographing my life away (search: #TIC_LarasLens). So many ways to get information these days. 

Of course the good ole' Facebook is still rolling, with photos and timeline status updates from time to time as well. 

Sichuan earthquake

For those of you who have heard and been concerned, asking me about the magnitude 4.6 Earthquake, 59km WSW of Linqiong, China... it was not even anywhere close to where I am, even despite the fact  that I am further south in China, traveling in Shenzhen right now for a Professional Development (PD) conference (more detail to come on that).

The epicenter was in the Sichuan province, which in southern, mainland China, far from where I'm at (China is huge, so a shake registering around 5.0 isn't so much as a shudder over here along the coast). However, the news is saying that the death toll is up nearly around 200... a testament to the crummy quality of Chinese construction skills. It's really quite tragic, especially since a large earthquake hit the same region in 2008. I wish the Chinese government would put more building codes in place to construct safer, more sustainable edifices.

Point A: Shenzhen, Guangdong province, just north of Hong Kong, where I'm at a PD conference.
Point B: earthquake epicenter, Leshan/Sichuan Province.
Point C: Where I live in Ningbo, Zhejiang province.