Parent-Teacher Meeting with a twist

Yesterday, I had to go to a Parent-Teacher Meeting at Tori's school.

***Keep in mind through the rest of this post that this entire meeting was conducted in Chinese. They spoke Chinese. I stuttered along in Chinese. No English was spoken. Just getting that out there.***

 I arrived at the school and we were directed to a room and given hot tea. I had received a note last week that there would be a meeting, but couldn't quite discern what the topic of discussion was going to be. Because, you guessed it, the note was in Chinese. All total there was about 25-30 parents/grandparents. One of the teachers started the meeting welcoming everyone and thanking us for attending. She explained that we were going to be talking about _______________ and they wanted to hear everyone's thoughts and opinions. Seriously, that is all that I understood. I kept listening, hoping that she would further explain it. But, oh no. Her next words were: "And to start off we will hear from our foreigner parent." My heart stopped. And all eyes were on me. I started to explain that my ideas may not be the same as theirs, but I was looking forward to hearing others' opinions as well. I mean, what else could I say? Thankfully, at this point, the teacher interrupted me and introduced me to the other parents. Then maybe she could tell I was totally lost and had pity on me. Because she then re-asked the question: "Why do you pick your child up early from school?"

Yes. Thank you, Wang Laoshi! I explained that I pick Tori up early 2 days a week to teach her to read in English. The teacher then moved on to asking other parents what their reasons were for picking their children. The kids did not like the food, had trouble sleeping at school, got sick when they slept there, . . . After they had heard all of our opinions, there was a teacher that I had not met who spoke. Just for the record, they told us his title - I think he was with the bureau of teaching - but I kind of missed that part. He explained that they were then going to discuss each of these issues and hopefully could come to an agreement.

So, he turned to me and said first we will discuss teaching English. Just for the record, I really liked this teacher. He listened well and really wanted to understand each individual viewpoint. We then (and by we, I mean: the male teacher asked me questions, I answered them, and all the other parents sat there and listened) discussed what/how/why I teach Tori for the next 10 minutes. Actually, it could have been longer. I know that it felt like 30 minutes, but maybe that was just my nervousness? He wanted to know why I was teaching her. I explained that at some point we would go back to America and Tori would need to know how to read so she could attend school in English. At this point, he asked: what language do we speak at home? English. Was I just teaching her to speak? no, to read English books

And this is where it got confusing for him. The concept of "teaching to read" is a newer concept in China. Especially teaching phonics. Most often, when Chinese learn English they learn it much like they do Chinese characters - through memorization of whole words. I tried explaining it further, but could tell he was just not quite understanding me. Thankfully he moved on to helping me try to "solve" this problem. Could Tori learn to read in the evenings? I explained that I have other children who are home in the evenings and we often have other things going on. I also told him that she goes to bed early so there was not enough time. After what seemed like a long time, he moved on to address the other issues. Thankfully, I did not have to talk again.

When the meeting was over, I approached the principal's assistant for clarification and asked her: So, I will or will not be allowed to pick up Tori early any more? She said, no that I could still pick her up early. Huh? There is so much about this whole experience that could be a lesson in cross culture awareness. Like the wanting to address all of these issues as a group all the way through to that even if there is a rule sometimes there is an exception. Honestly, though when I left I wasn't even thinking about that. I was EXHAUSTED. And I really wanted chocolate. Because even though I speak Chinese a lot on a given day, there was just a different kind of pressure in this environment. Most of the time I am speaking with friends who like me no matter how bad my Chinese is. Or shopkeepers/taxi drivers/general people I don't know. Can I just say again that learning a language keeps you so humble? So everyone reading out there, if you come across someone in the US (or where ever) who doesn't speak English well, give them some grace. Think of me, living here for almost 3 years, and still not fluent, and give them some extra patience. But because I am too much of an optimist not to look at the bright side, my listening comprehension in the midst of this was pretty good. I think I got about 85% of what was being said. I just hope it doesn't take another 3 years of studying this hard for my speaking to catch up with my listening!