Wall of Fame at 10:35 AM

K guys, this is my wall of fame. I say fame because at my school, if you're white, you're famous. So, I realize that this collage is a little dismal right now, but that's no big deal, because all you have to do if you want your picture up here is mail one to me. =)
So far I have, Dave and Abby's wedding photo, Emili and her family, Mom and Dad, and a picture that Keely has sent me from her mission. So, if you want me to have your picture. Send it on over. The mail usually takes about 2-3 weeks. So send it soon because I'll be on vacation once February starts, hopefully earlier. (We never know when holidays are in China until the day before or week of at best.... chinese culture...)

So, here's my address.

Samuel Griffiths
C/O Mr. Zhou Zhixi  
Foreign Affairs Office of No. 1 Middle School of Yongzhou City
Hunan Province, P. R. China
Post Code: 425006

Love you guys

(In case you were wondering, I don't have a printer)
(Also, if you don't send one, don't think that I'll think you don't love me, I know you do)

The Evidence of Christmas at 9:16 PM

Seeing as how it's Christmas day, I thought I'd write about Christmas. Now in our culture (western Culture) Once Christmas day comes and goes we don't say anything about Christmas again until next November at the earliest. But, seeing as how I live in China, and there's not much evidence of Christmas anywhere anyways, I figure I can do pretty much what ever I want, which includes writing about Christmas even when the Christmas Season is practically over.

I've been listening to Christmas music all month, hoping that I could at least feel like it was Christmas. It hasn't really worked. Part of that is because there's no christmas lights, christmas trees, wossail, family, friends, mistletoe (I really miss this one), change in shopping habits for locals, or corner Santa Clauses.

To tell you the truth, it didn't feel like Christmas at all until I was wrapping a couple presents yesterday for school leaders. Christmas eve wasn't all that special. I basically sat in my apartment and read my scriptures and played video games, which I guess is what every LDS kid would want to do on the holidays anyways... Although, I did get some phone calls and emails from my family, which made all the difference in the world.

But I've a lot of time and opportunity to look at Christmas from a pretty different perspective. People here don't celebrate it, and in truth, they know about it, but they know about it the way I knew about Hanukkah when I was a kid, which is basically squat. It's one of those things I think you have to experience to understand. The joy that I've had from Christmas's past has carried me through this one in such a way that even though I had nothing of the things I loved around me, like family and friends, I've been fine. I could go on for ages about how much I love Christmas with my family, and how much happiness it's brought me in my life, but you would already understand and probably find it boring, but I think it's a point worth making and here's why.

When there's no evidence of Christmas, at least no visible evidence - mistletoe, Christmas trees, presents, stockings, tinsel you can see things a little more clearly. By you I mean the general you, not you the reader specifically. I mean to say that with out all the physical things, I've thought a lot more about all the things that really matter, the things we celebrate at Christmas. Our friends, our family, the spirit of giving and love, and our savior are the things that I celebrate at Christmas. Those are the things that really matter to me, and something dawned on me in the last 24 hours. Those things don't go away when the new year comes around. We may put away our Christmas decorations, take down our Christmas tree, and watch the reds and greens fade away from city centers, but all the things that I really love are still around. Maybe I don't have vacation time anymore to see them, but my family is still there. They still love me. The Savior is always there, and he always watches out for me. He doesn't care if it's Christmas, even in this remote part of the world where I'm farther away then ever before from everything I have known. I know He is mindful of me and has helped shape the experiences around me so they could be for my good. He was there for me before, and will be there for me after.

Now, my readers need not think that I'm not a fan of gifts, stockings, wossail, or mistletoe. I'm actually a big fan of all of the above, BUT thank goodness that family and all the other things that really matter are around more than once a year.

Attention span issues: Myself vs The Average Chinese Teenager at 8:57 PM

I've noticed a disturbing trend among my students. A lot of my kids just can't focus on some one talking. They can't really do it that well. The interesting thing is that it seems to be wholly independent of whatever the person is talking about. I had a lesson on dating this week. Now this may seem like a boring subject to some people, but I assure you to Chinese high school kids, it doesn't get any better than this.
My understanding is that most Chinese high schools tell their students they're not allowed to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. The first day I got here, when I was new and interesting to the students (which now I don't think I am...) They wanted to know if I had a girlfriend and when I said that I didn't literally, I had everyone's undivided attention. It was kind of awesome.

But now, I the second class starts some kids shut off before I can even say what the lesson is on. I think that most of this is due to technology. It's not all kids, but it's a fair few. Most kids don't do it in my classes because they know I'll take their phones if they're caught (of which I've already taken 2 today and I've only taught two classes so far). Now here's the thing that scares me. Is as a business student at BYU I was the same way. I still paid attention in most of my classes. I got good grades and I knew what the teacher had talked about. But I had played games on my laptop too and I'm definitely guilty of checking my email in class and reading the news too.

So what is it? Why is it so hard to at least listen to somebody for two or three minutes before we shut off in a lecture setting and decide that they're not worth listening too when we can hook up to our ipod or our cell phone. Luckily they're no laptops in church. But at the same time, I'm still guilty in that setting to.

Elder Hales used to seem so boring to me when I was a kid. He's not a flash speaker and I don't remember him ever having my full attention before I was 19. Lame I know. Anyways, as I got older and a little more mature I started going back to read the conference talks within a month of two of watching conference. I remember one specific time where I went back and read his talks and it blew my socks off. It was amazing. I thought 'how could this be? He's the boring one!'... nope, he sure isn't. I just didn't have the patience to sit and listen to him. Now he's one of my favorites. His talks never cease to have an impact on me.

I think 100 or 200 years ago this wasn't the case. There were no distractions and listening was easy. You went to a church and all you did was listen. You had things to talk about, but it was never so serious you talked about it IN a church meeting. Especially not for the whole meeting. Now things are different. In a classroom we have so many gadgets that I think it's legitimately hard to give you're attention to a teacher. We're too used to 15-25 second commercials and fast changes in what we're paying attention too that it's hard to sit and listen to someone for a half hour. I think listening is a form of work for our generation. Wierd I know. Maybe it's always been true, but it's totally true for us. We live in such a time of information that is so readily available that we don't realize how much it's worth. Some people do, and those people are my heroes. One of them is Mike Wilson. I've never known someone who was a doctor that taught political philosophy on the side. That alone is a testament to his love of knowledge. For a guy that practically has ADHD (me), I can't help but admire someone who has that much focus. Another one is my uncle Gary. He's really good at keeping up on technology. He know's a lot and he makes it his business to understand what's going on in the world. I think if I had half the discipline either of them have, I'd be set.

 I watched part of a conservative rally outside the capital building in DC. This was right after the health bill had passed in the house of representatives. I can understand why conservatives didn't like the health bill, but it was funny. As I listened to this man I heard him say that this (the new health bill he held in his hands) is 2,000 pages of crap. Now it may have been crap. But it was funny because he didn't say why, he just ripped on democrats. I don't think a single person walked away from that meeting understand more about life or government, but I think they did all leave more angry then they had come. Productive? I don't really think so.

I think had people really been listening, it might have made a big difference. Not in the sense that they would have changed their minds, but that a person who has an opinion ought to be able to defend himself and ought to be able to listen to the opinion of someone else even if they don't agree. At least it promotes education and progress. I think it would even lead to a solution if we gave it a chance.

I really believe that listening is a gift. It's a talent that people don't think about often, but it's worth gold if we can develop it. I think one of the problems with politics today is that people have forgotten how to listen. I realize these are all random stories, but they all point to the fact that if people can listen, it could make a world of difference.
In conclusion I think listening would bless America, Chinese teenagers, and me.

And it's cool that I have a blog, cause than I can write about whatever I want. But this for me is a forum too. I love people's comments and I'll always listen. Or at least try to.

Demographic Winter at 3:15 AM

The decline of the human family.

http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

If you have a few minutes, go to this website, and on the right hand side, there's a tab that says trailers.
I just watched the trailer for the movie "Demographic Winter"
And it's pretty intense. These people predicted our financial crisis before it happened, and they did well.
Let me know what you think.

Popcorn at 9:29 AM

So, tonight I made popcorn in a wok. Well Brooke(friend) helped me so I guess it's we, but ya, we made popcorn. Popcorn and a movie right? Sounds fun. It was. When we first started cooking the popcorn Brooke asked if we should keep a lid on the wok. I said no. Why would we. We want to know when it's going to burn, so lets keep the lid off and we can keep a better eye on it. What a foolish idea that was. I went to load up the movie and I heard screaming and laughing from the kitchen. I ran back and found Brooke (the other foreign teacher) laughing loud about 3 feet away from the wok while popcorn was exploding and kernals were literally shooting across the kitchen. After getting pelted a few times I managed to successfully navigate the war zone and get a lid onto the popcorn. Made for an interesting night. It also only took about 5 minutes to clean the popcorn off of the walls, and popcorn made in a wok tastes super good. Who knew?

Next time I'll keep a lid on it.

Random Awesome at 5:04 AM

I thought this was cool.
It's how to wash your car with a single bucket.
I'd say it's clean.

Expectations at 4:04 AM

Dear Blog Readers,

This blog post may not be for you if you have sensitive eyes or ears, I'm warning you there is short quote that contains mild foul language in this blogentry . The next entries you won't have worry about that, but I have to let you know. I never want someone to be mad that they read this blog.

With that out of the way I want to write about expectations. 
I've been struggling a lot with teaching lately. Here are the reasons why teaching English here (China) is difficult
1. My classes have at least 60 kids, sometimes upwards of 70 or 80.
2. I can't give my students a grade.
3. Some of my kids won't try becuase they don't understand any English
4. Kids think I'll be easier on them then their normal teachers, so often they'll do things the wouldn't normally do like
   A. Listen to headphones in class
   B. Read News in Chinese on their phones
   C. Play video games on phones or dictionaries in class

It's been really hard some days to do anything. Sometimes class goes really well, but often, kids have a bad day, or kids are trying to get away with stuff they know they shouldn't do. The other foreign teacher at my school actually caught a kid smoking in a closet during her class a few weeks ago.

So I've been thinking a lot about it and talking a lot about it. Cause it can be pretty frustrating some days. Especially since a lot of my classes were changed lately and I have different kids who are trying to push the limits.

Three things came together to help me understand I'm not the worst teacher in the world. They are listed as follows:

1. Another teacher who helps us out a lot (Luke Liu, a Chines guy with really good English, and a great friend) said that I have to accept the fact that some kids aren't going to listen. He said we act like communists as teachers (hear this out), we teach like every child is the same even though we know in our hearts that they're all at different levels. We try to make a lesson that will help every child improve, which is impossible since every child is in a different place, but we still try. However, to think that you can get every child to choose to learn every class is not going to happen. Kids have their agency. It made me feel a lot better. I always thought the kids were perfect for their Chinese teachers, but I realized that even the super strict mean chinese teachers still have kids who are oblivious or who are causing commotion.

2. I was talking to my sister last night. I realize that even though I can't see everything inside her life and all the things she struggles with, she's totally my hero. I've always thought she did way more than she gave herself credit for. I was telling her about how it's hard to motivate my self to learn Chinese when there's no due date and I can't really measure my progress, and she totally understood. She made it sound like her whole life was like that with all the things she knew she should do, but I look at her life and I see a successful person who is doing everything she knows how. She's totally one of the hero's of my life. If I ended up in a situation close to where she's at right now, I would consider my life a success.
All in all, I realized that the discrepancy between how I looked at her life and how she looked at her life was based on expectations. All she could see was the things she hadn't done that she had expected herself to do that day, and all I can see are the things that she's been working on for years that are totally awesome. It made me feel better because in conjunction with that I realized that for the classes I teach, I used to have to speak slow, and now I don't. Even though my classes act really bad sometimes and I'm frustrated with them, technically I've done a good job since they understand way more english than they did before.

3. Today I was reminded of a close friend of mine. A girl who has had her share of struggles in life, like the rest of us. I first met her in one of my student wards at BYU where she was the relief society president. Really an amazing girl. Anyways, one day she was having an especially hard time with all the things that she was expected to do. It was a little too much and I'm sure she felt a little like garbage because she knew she couldn't get it all done. She called her dad and told her a bit about how she was feeling and how hard things had been for her and he gave her this advice.
"honey, I want you to go outside, k?" (Father)
"Um, ok" (Daughter)
"You outside?" (Father)
"Yeah" (Daughter)
"ok, I want you to yell at the top of your lungs, 'Damn you society and to hell with your expectations'" (Father)
"Really?" (Daughter)
"Really" (Father)
"Now?" (Daughter)
"Now" (Father)
(Yelling) (Daughter)
"Good job Honey, you feel any better?" (Father)

That story always made me laugh a lot.  And I think he's right. I wouldn't word it that way, but I think we get caught up in what we think we should do and we don't give ourselves enough credit, so we're bogged down by bad emotions cause we never feel like we're doing good enough. But we are doing good enough. It may not be everything we hoped for, but we're doing our best, and I think when we can look back on our best we'll see that great improvement was made and that we're happy with our effort.

With that in mind, I went to class today ready to have fun. Not to have all of my kids behaving perfectly.
I went with this hypothesis:
Even if we're playing games, we're still practicing English, and therefore still improving.
So even though a straight class of games is not common in high school, for my classes, it's not a bad thing, since I teach spoken English, and if we're speaking, we're practicing.

So, here was my class today.
Part 1 - I rolled up some trash paper and we threw it around the room. Who ever it landed on had to answer a 'favorite' question. ie "What is your favorite color?" or subject, or basketball player. We did that for about 15 minutes and it was super fun. I asked the questions to the students if they got the paper. At one point one of my students threw the paper at me. And I asked him who he was trying to hit. He said me! Then he asked me who my favorite girl was, so I said my mother. They didn't like the cop out, but the game was a hit, and almost everyone participated.

Part 2 - I went through about 8 vocabulary words that had to do with Christmas. I think you'll see how they fit together.
Santa
Beard
Gift
Coal (naught or nice right?)
sleigh
reindeer
chimney
I explained each one and how it fit together with Christmas and made sure they all knew how to say each word, and what the meaning was.
This lasted about 10-20 minutes

Part 3 - I erased the words and we played a game where after I divided the class into teams, I called on random kids and made them spell out words that I called.
This part lasted anywhere from 5-20 minutes depending on how much of class was left.

Overall, the lesson went well in every class. They heard english, they spoke english, and we rejoiced. There were a few kids who weren't paying attention, but when I let it go, I felt better. I would love to be able to have every kids undivided attention, but as long as there's agency that's not going to happen. But I'm happy to teach the kids that want to learn and to continue to learn how to be a better teacher to reach the kids that aren't as interested.

Anyways, in conclusion, I think expectations for how you want to perform are good. But they have to be reasonable. I think if they are, they'll bring happiness as we strive to be better, I think if they're not we'll end up beating ourselves up a lot for things that we may have actually done a good job on. So, I will continue to refine my expectations of what I want to achieve with my classes. I can't make everyone fluent, but even up to now my students have made leaps and bounds in their abilities. I think I'm doing alright.