TSU Confucius Institute successfully held the first teaching seminar.
May 14, 2017
On May 14th, the first teaching seminar of TSU was successfully held . The seminar invited 5 teachers from TSU Foreign Language Department and American primary and secondary schools in two different sessions to share their experience of enrolment, instructional design and teaching management. Roger Hart, Dean of the TSU Confucius Institute, Yi Xiao, Chinese director of TSU Confucius Institute, Chinese teacher Lina Na, Zhang Yue and all the Chinese volunteers Han Xiaomeng, Liu Yuanjing, Zhang Mingchi, Bai Tianxuan, Wang Ya Bao, Cao Yawen, Ren Zhijie, Du Chenxi attended the seminar.
At present, TSU Confucius Institute witnesses a vigorous development in that it has a total of two teachers, eight Chinese volunteers and has established seven teaching points including Global Village and Ball High school. Their students range from African-American students in TSU, children of Chinese consulate staff, the local American primary and secondary students to Chinese American students, which poses a high demand for the Chinese teachers and volunteers to prepare for the class and carry out teaching activities. In order to provide more teaching support to teachers and volunteers to improve the quality of teaching, TSU Confucius Institute Confucius Institute organised the seminar to invite the three professors of the TSU Department of Foreign Languages,, Caussinus Marylise, Martin Beller, Erwin Tommy, and Chinese language teachers at the Global Learning village Ling Zhang, Ball High School and Parker elementary, Rong Wang as lecturers.
On May 2nd, three professors from the TSU Department of Foreign Languages shared their experience at Confucius Institute. They made suggestions on how to develop Chinese teaching better at TSU from different perspectives. Taking the Spanish language club in its own Spanish class as an example, Spanish teacher Caussinus Marylise recommends to make full use of the club's strengths and integrate the power of students to organise enrolment and publicity activities. Professor Martin Beller said that given the weak social and economic status of African-American students, it is recommended that Confucius Institute lays more emphasis in publicity on the benefits the students can get from learning Chinese such as more employment opportunities and larger competitive edge in university application. Professor Erwin Tommy suggested that Chinese teaching integrate the characteristics of students in curriculum resources and teaching design.
On May 14th,two Chinese teachers Ling Zhang, Rong Wang came to TSU Confucius Institute at the Southern University of Texas, to lecture on classroom management in United States primary schools.As a specialist in foreign language and a teacher in Global Learning village,Ling Zhang has a wealth of experience of teaching. Sh enumerated a variety of classroom behaviour of students, pointed out their motivations and gave specific solutions to them. As the first Chinese teacher to win the award ‘Top 50 teachers in Galveston district,’ Wang contacted nearly 700 students a year and had rich classroom management skills. “ We need love students, but in order to improve the efficiency of primary school classroom teaching, the teachers need clear instructions to keep students follow the teachers" Wang explained her teaching philosophy like such. Then, she simulated teaching scenes and demonstrated her way of classroom management in setting up classroom rules and reward system.
All the teachers and volunteers find the two sessions of teaching seminars highly beneficial in learning how to teaching preparation and class management.