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Caryl Hodges, an education professor, teaching in Xiamen.
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Teaching in China
The University of San Francisco began an export of its teacher-training curriculum this summer with a new program in Xiamen, China. The first USF educational program in main land China, the course uses English-language instructors from the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education’s international and multicultural education program to train Chinese English-language teachers.
A team of five USF faculty is teaching the course over the spring and summer, with each instructor going overseas for a two-and-a-half week block. Another three faculty will go in the fall. The USF instructors teach applied linguistics, grammar, and advanced speaking curriculum to graduate-level students. They also give the Chinese teachers an overview of American teaching methods, which differ in some ways from Chinese methods. Group work, for example, is not common in Chinese schools.
“They had never worked that way in the classroom,” said Dorothy Messerschmitt, a professor of education, who was the first USF faculty member to go to Xiamen. By the end of her time at the Xiamen Education College, however, Messerschmitt said the Chinese teachers had adapted to American methods.
Located across the straits from Taiwan, the island city of Xiamen is one of several government-designated free-market economic zones. The program is scheduled to end in December but USF hopes to extend the contract into the future.
Caryl Hodges, an assistant professor in the School of Education who taught in Xiamen in May, said her students—many of whom speak three or four languages—wanted to understand American idioms like “wishy-washy.” The language barrier aside, however, Hodges said she learned how much American teachers and their Chinese colleagues are alike.
“I learned that in many ways, regardless of cultural background, we are basically the same in our impressions of how teachers have influenced us,” Hodges said. “The ineffective teacher, for example, seems to be universal. They talked about personality as being important, not textbooks. Teaching is about human contact, not using a certain strategy.”
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