Wow! The past few weeks have been extremely busy for us. After having a short but sweet summer vacation, we really hit the ground running here in Dongguan. Unlike our teaching jobs in Beijing, our new positions require us to work about a forty hour work week. Teaching at an international school requires us to devote more time to the students.The first week of work was strictly dedicated to new teacher orientation. The first session was focused on giving us an overview of Dongguan. We learned about shopping, attractions, events, etc. It gave us a good understanding of what this city has to offer. Unfortunately, Dongguan is not very historical. It's story has been told to us many times that just a short while ago this area was known as a fishing town. But as the government instituted "Economic Development Zones," Dongguan has begun its transformation into an urban hub. The city still has a long way to go before it can truly be considered "developed" but with the amount of construction going on daily it will not take long.
The next area we discussed was the history of QSI International School of Dongguan. Our school director shared with us the schools humble beginnings just a few short years ago to its current state of massive growth. Basically, in the school's first year there were about 25 students. Then by the end of the second year enrollment had reach the 60s. Now, as we begin year three the numbers have skyrocketed to approximately 180 students! With such tremendous growth increases it was evident that a new school site was needed. So with the help of the board of directors, QSI has (slowly) broken ground on a new location. It appears that this new school might take several months to get built, but our director is very optimisitic that it will be finished before year's end.
The school is a state-of-the-art, multi-million dollar three building school site that includes a theater, computer lab, multi-purpose room , track, swimming pool, and tennis court area. Best of all, it is being built in the Nancheng District about half a kilometer from where our apartment complex is. So it would be extremely convenient if the building were to be finished in the near future. Nevertheless, soon QSI will have an incredible school that will be able to accommodate nearly 500 students!
Later we spent a number of hours reviewing the curriculum of our school. Unlike most schools in the U.S., QSI believes in mastery learning. More or less this means that students will not be allowed to receive anything below a "B" on their schoolwork. It is a demanding system that is designed to have the teacher and student share the responsibility for student achievement. Supposedly this model has been implemented at all 37 schools in the QSI worldwide organization and has been very successful. 
Our orientation concluded with teacher classroom time. This was a good opportunity for us to prepare our rooms for the first day of school. This time was especially important for Pazi who needed her room to be just right for her four year old pre-schoolers (see photo from previous paragraph). Adan helped her a bit while they tried to locate PE materials that were put into storage. The end product was a neatly decorated room with lots of bright colors and games to welcome the kids.
Adan finally received his equipment and basically did an inventory check. The gymnasium right now is very small. Due to the delay in the new school being built, QSI has had no choice but to renovate a small multi-purpose room. Foam tiles have been laid down to absorb shock and falls from the kids, but really the room looks like a rec room at a Boys and Girls Club (go to above photo). Also, since Adan is teaching Intensive English, he is given a small classroom to work with small groups of students (photo on the right). The space is nothing extravagant but it gets the job done. Small World We Live In
As we worked on prepare the aformentioned classrooms, it was quite a suprise to meet a young volunteer by the name of Cynthia. She was a petite and quite Chinese girl. We noticed that she was really wanting to help the teachers with school preparation so we decided to introduce ourselves. Well it turns out that Cynthia is from Dongguan but is a senior at the Communications University of China-Beijing. This school shares a campus wall with Beijing International Studies University. We pratically ran into a student from our school thousands of miles away! She was so excited to learn that we taught at BISU. We instantly started sharing our favorite restaurants, shopping stores, etc. from our old neighborhood.
We spent the next couple of days working with her. Then on the last day of the week, Cynthia offered to show us around Dongguan on her last weekend before having to go back to Beijing for her last year of college. We happily agreed to let her be our guide. That weekend we spent a Sunday afternoon with her learning about shops for shoes and name brand knockoffs. She took us to a small park that was close to her high school. This school was amazing. Check out the photo of her schools activities center below! It was a pleasant day just taking a stroll around town with our new friend.
