Back to School…

I teach two classes here in Dalian, Linear Algebra from 8:30 to 10:30 and Calculus II from 10:40 to 12:40. There are 6 students in Linear Algebra and 12 in Calculus, both very manageable and enjoyable class sizes. The classes meet 5 days a week, which is not easy for the students or me.

The students in both classes are great, they show up every day, do the homework, and are working hard to learn the material. I have high school students and students currently enrolled in colleges in both the US and China. There are both males and females in both classes, and i really have not paid any attention to the split, since i am so accustomed to a gender diverse classroom from my time at Carnegie Mellon. The only diversity missing is nationality, they are all Chinese.

A typical school day has gone like this:

• Wake up at 6, shower, head to the 5th floor for breakfast, back up in the room about 6:45 or so to relax and read the newspaper, either the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, China Daily, or the South China News.
• Downstairs at 7:30 to catch the van to school. We leave about 7:40, and it takes anywhere from 30 – 50 minutes to get to school depending on traffic. And it is not that far away…about 8 miles by the shortest route.
• We get to school somewhere between 8:15 and 8:25, and I head for my classroom. Set up the computer, look over my notes quickly to review the plan for the day, and then it is showtime!
• I take a 10 minute break at about the midpoint of each class, it is impossible for the students to sustain their attention for 2 hours straight, and i am not crazy about lecturing for 2 hours straight. When you add in the temperature in the un-airconditioned class rooms, there is no way they can stay alert for two hours without a break.
• Class is over at 12:40 and the shuttle leaves to take us back to the hotel about 12:50. We arrive at the hotel between 1:15 and 1:30
• Pam and I relax for a few minutes, have some lunch, and then it is back to work getting ready for the next day or grading. That is the pace of summer school!

Meet my Linear Algebra class, and see the classroom.

From left to right in the photo above we have Julia, David, and David. In the picture below is Bangjie, possibly the greatest teaching assistant in the world! Bangjie (my TA Yujia in Calculus does these things as well) takes the roll, grades the homework, and brings me water every day (we drink only bottled water here, both foreigners and residents). Bangjie distinguishes himself in many ways from the other TAs.

One example of Bangjie going the extra mile is the chalk. The chalk in China is terrible, and while I don’t generally criticize our gracious hosts here, there is no denying the chalk is terrible. It is much less dense than we are used to, and very soft, and breaks if you so much as look at it. We all end up working with pieces less than an inch long, because that is what is left. Bangjie saw the difficulty i was having and ordered some Crayola dustless chalk from Amazon for me and had it delivered. Priceless!

This is the view from the back of the classroom, it looks pretty much the same as any classroom, except the A/V controls are in Chinese characters.

More pictures of Linear Algebra once everyone is there. The gentleman in the back is a faculty member at the University here, and was sitting in on my lectures for a couple of days.

Left to right in the photo below are Serena, David, Zitong, and Bangjie.

In the photo below are Nancy, Julia, and David.

Meet my much larger Calculus II class, this was snapped while they took a quiz. Notice the small personal fan in front of Annie in the front row, she was not alone in using one of these. Have i mentioned the classrooms were hot?

The next several photos show the LION temporary office here at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics, and more importantly than the room, the staff. They have been extremely helpful and fantastic to work with.

From left to right: Julia, Iris, Chin, Rose, and a young lady whose name i don’t know, shame on me.

One big difference between the way i teach at home and here is that i am using PowerPoint for the lecture slides, instead of doing everything on the blackboard. There are a few reasons for that choice. One is that I don’t have class notes for either of these subjects; mine from when I took these course would be so old (if i had not thrown them out long ago) that they might fall apart. The second reason is that I can then give the slides to the students after class, which is a help since they are not native English speakers. I ended up using a hybrid approach, where I will talk about the material on the slide, and then often end up working it out in detail on the board.

I could say more, and might at some point, but the alarm just went off so it is time to hop in the shower, get some breakfast, go to school, and hand back the final exams they took yesterday!

Yes, our adventure in China is rapidly drawing to a close, it is Friday morning for me, and we leave in about 72 hours.