Written by Jiang  Jie

I’m the first Chinese teacher of Confucius Institute in New Brunswick from China. For me, the year of 2013 has too many transitions, the biggest one is that I was sent to Saint John working by myself after my Thailand tenure.  Living and working alone in a strange city, from all the strangeness of this city on September to all the familiarity now,  I really experienced a lot .

First of all, life, you need to get everything done bravely by yourself. From the trifles of life, to know the traffic conditions of this city  to all kinds formalities of social insurance and medicare insurance, are all need solved by myself. I am very grateful that I have a brave heart and persistence,and two years’ experience in Thailand. 

For work, everything is starting from the beginning because I’m the only Chinese teacher in this city. I’m teaching  at Harbour view high school， Saint John High School and St. Malachy’s Memorial High School. The main content is Chinese traditional culture such as paper-cut Peking Opera and so on, at the same time,there will be taught some basic Chinese language. 

Because there is propagating lack before , the students don’t know they have the opportunity to learn Chinese . So I asked for broadcast the place and time of the club every time, I made posters including the time and place and contents of the class on the school publicity column in advance , I sent email to every teacher asking for help, I found the Chinese international students of the high school hoping them disseminate Chinese program. Hard work pays off, after a lot of efforts,there is a good development of Chinese clubs in this semester. 

Because of Thailand teaching experience for the similar age of students as here, I know how to catch the students attention and teach them. I try to keep the interest of the club : I taught them paper cutting, facial make-up of Beijing opera,and Chinese traditional food;sent them some interesting videos through email , communicated with them as friends. Many students are interested in learning Chinese ,they want to learn Chinese language ,so they wrote applications to principal. And we got the permission to increase the class. 

Read more ...