Aug. 25, 2006
Amity Teachers arrive for Nanjing conference and prepare for a new school year
On August 20th, after an English worship service where all of the new Amity teachers shared favorite hymns and scriptures together in praising God, serious packing began. Just a couple of hours later all of us—the 16 new teachers and everyone who assisted in their orientation—boarded a bus to go from Huzhou to Nanjing. As we arrived in Nanjing, the other 28 Amity teachers who had already been teaching in China for a year or more also began arriving. The Amity Teacher Summer Conference in Nanjing then began. It included time for new teachers and continuing teachers to meet one another; time for learning some updates from a number of Amity’s different divisions; time for meeting Presbyter Ji Jianhong, the head of the Three-self Movement of the Church; time for discussing how to deal with students who may face psychological problems; time for meeting with others who would be teaching in the same region of China and to begin planning for a future regional conference; time to visit an Amity project; and time for worship together.
On August 24th, all 44 Amity teachers headed out for their teaching sites. They are currently in 25 schools in seven provinces and regions. Moreover three of those regions are in the western part of China as Amity tries to provide more help to these less developed areas of the country. In fact, this year Amity has teachers in five additional schools in the west that have never had Amity teachers before, three in Gansu Province and two in Guangxi Province. Currently 18 teachers are in Gansu Province, eight in Guangxi Province, two in Anhui Province, five in Jiangxi Province, one in Zhejiang Province, one in Sichuan Province and nine in Jiangsu Province. All have been cleaning and getting settled into the apartments provided by their schools. Most have Western style toilets, but at least two teachers found Asian style squat toilets in their apartments. Most live and teach in buildings without elevators and will be getting lots of exercise each day as the go up and down the stairs. Some will have multimedia classrooms available; others will have basic blackboards whose condition may vary. Most will be teaching English teaching majors. Almost all will be teaching oral English. In addition, some will be teaching writing, culture, literature, or methodology. Some will start their classes on September 4th; others on September 11th, depending on their particular school’s academic calendar. A few will be teaching freshmen who come a little later than other students and who have a time of military training before they begin their classes. Generally, freshman classes begin right after the National Day Holiday week. Since National Day is October 1st, this means freshmen will begin their classes during the 2nd week in October. Some of the teachers will have 30-40 students in a class; some will have as many as 70 – 90 in a class. All are happy to be here and happy to be serving through their teaching.
November 7-12, Judy will be part of one of three teams to make official visits to some of the teachers and their schools. She will travel with Amity staff person Robert Ji (Ji Xiaodong) to the Amity teachers in two of the fairly distant schools in Gansu Province, namely those in Wuwei and in Zhangye.
Visit to Kindergarten for the Hearing Impaired
Amity teachers learn about mental health issues