In my Financial English class, I set up the room for an economics experiment, not realizing that it would also lead to a social experiment. Typically, our classrooms are arranged with a group of desks in the center section, flanked by narrower side sections. But this time, I split the chairs down the middle to create a large center “trading floor.” To my surprise, this prompted the students to self-segregate by gender with 29 boys on the left and 27 girls on the right – zero mixing!
I did the same experiment with my Business Negotiation class. It is a smaller group, so they ended up taking a different approach:
In America, I suspect that students would have evenly spread out to maximize their personal space. But in the Chinese “group culture,” the students all squeezed onto one side to stay together:
In addition to the usual classes, we have the opportunity to spend time with students at the school-sponsored English corner. Sometimes outdoors:
and sometimes, indoors:
Teaching English in China can provide opportunities for creative expression (click Sweet Home KM to watch):
In addition to being a “group culture,” we are thankful that China is a culture that respects elders, allowing us the opportunity to spend time with interested young people!
Very different than Millennials over here…