Day one in Guangzhou

I’m writing this in the British Council car on the way to Guangzhou School for the Blind. Yesterday was spent at Guangzhou No 5 Middle School in the south of the city. We ran a three hour workshop in the morning for more than 30 teachers from different primary, middle and senior schools. The focus was very much on passing on practical skills and techniques that could subsequently be implemented by teachers in their English lessons. Some of the main challenges include very large classes and a lack of space, along with the pressures of delivering a demanding curriculum in just 40 minutes. In the afternoon, we had an excellent planning session with three teachers from Guangzhou No 5 Middle School, Guangzhou Overseas Chinese Foreign Language School and Jiang Nan Middle School. All three teachers will be using elements from the 100 Words workshop in today’s lessons, which we will be observing later. Before this, we’ll be delivering a taster workshop to students at Guangzhou School for the Blind. Graham Hardy, headteacher at its link school in Birmingham, Calthorpe, will also be there along with the Guangzhou based English team from the British Council. We’re hoping that we’ll have time for a quick chat with staff beforehand to establish the skill level of the students – traffic allowing (always an unknown in China).