English Teacher in Ganzi

While eating dinner, we meet a Tibetan girl (Zhouma) that studied English at university. Zhouma is the English teacher at the local middle school and after some chit-chat, invites us to come to her school to meet her class and speak English with them the following morning (Monday).

After some back and forth, we decide to go to school following dinner (9:00pm on a Sunday night). The school is a boarding school and the students have class from 7:00am until 10:00pm.

When we arrive at the school, the students are incredibly excited to meet us and each of us is given a classroom of students that we can talk to.

My Tibetan classroom for the hour.

After answering a lot of questions from the students about my background, the students ask me to sing a song. I tell them that first they should sing me a song. One of the students walks to the front of the classroom and sings a Michael Jackson song and does a few of his dance moves (including the moonwalk). I try and imitate and the students all laugh.

After the dance, the entire class sings a Tibetan song about the mountains and the rivers, Tibetan countryside. I didn’t think the students would actually sing. Now I’m faced with a classroom of teenagers chanting sing sing sing sing.

I decide to teach a song that all the students can participate in, a song we all learn in primary school in Australia – My Highland Goat.

The class does very well at singing and I have them write down the lyrics in their notebooks so as to sing it with their teacher another day.

When 10:00pm comes around and the students need to finish class and go to bed, none of them are interested and instead barricade the door so Zhouma can’t come in and tell them to go to bed.

I’m amazed to see such eager students staying back at class, however I remove the barricade and after taking some photos with the group, wish them a good night.

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