Class Dynamics

Using a makeshift city diagram to practice directions in English.

Two thousand undergrads at Beijing Linye Daxue, six hundred grads, and several dozen professionals there for English training. Most of my students were between the ages of 22 and 32; a few professionals were in their forties, two in their fifties.

Classrooms had cement floors and walls, painted in a color scheme repeated throughout the nation: pale green below the waist, then white up to the ceiling. The walls were dusty, the paint so cracked it snapped away if anything was taped to it. Desks lined the perimeter of the room, leaving the middle empty. Women tended to sit on one side, men on the other.

At the beginning of each class I erased the whiteboard, tested my fading markers, and called roll (which was tricky for the section that opted against English names). Teaching meant getting them to talk, to practice their speaking and listening skills – not easy at first since most played shy. Over time, however, many developed into regular English chatterboxes. “Any questions?” I asked at the end of every class; rarely did anyone respond. Then after dismissal a few individuals would come up to ask questions they were reluctant to ask in front of their peers.

Teachers rotated between classrooms; students stayed put. It gave the learning climate a different feel. In America, random students assemble for a short time on the teacher’s turf in a room customized for the subject. In China the teacher entered the students’ turf, a room they occupied as a group all day, with the only learning materials those the teacher carried in. Such an arrangement would spark an oppositional relationship in America: teacher ignorant of group history and dynamics, students enjoying home field advantage. This potential never seemed to materialize, however, thanks to China’s Daoist heritage, which inspired huge respect for authority (a trait tapped by the Communist Party to preserve one-party government). My students’ deference did wonders to smooth out the awkward moments in my teaching; any remaining tension was siphoned off by the class leader.

I didn’t know when or how each class selected its leader, but the position was immensely helpful. A class leader served as intermediary between teacher and students, voicing concerns to the teacher in a nonconfrontational, one-on-one basis. If students were displeased with the amount of homework or if they needed a slower pace, rather than calling out in class (potentially embarrassing themselves and causing the teacher to lose face), they told the leader, who then discussed the issue with the teacher privately. By picking a classmate who was particularly mature and responsible, students ensured the teacher would be more likely to hear their concerns. The leader could advise on appropriate responses, and could even act as a screen, blocking the teacher from trivial complaints by responding to them immediately.

I came to trust the leaders of my classes implicitly, and I actively sought their feedback. How did everyone think the day’s lesson went? Did they find anything confusing? Did the homework make sense? Since the leader reflected what others were thinking, he or she could be honest, giving me what I needed to know in order to improve.

Despite the title, a class leader didn’t necessarily make decisions – that power remained with the collective. My students deliberated over even trivial things: not only when to visit the Summer Palace, but which bus to take. Unlike Americans, who tend to prove their value through conspicuous contributions, my Chinese students seemed eager to elicit others’ ideas, and to conspicuously subordinate personal desires to group consensus. Americans exit a brainstorming session hoping their personal contributions aren’t forgotten; my students seemed to wave all that away, instead affirming group synergy.

Such a profoundly corporate attitude (direct product of Communist training, no doubt) astounded me. Not only did each set of sixteen students meet together for six hours of class a day, they shared dorm rooms together (in different buildings by gender). In such a situation many Americans would seek solitude and personal space away from the group, but my students ate meals in the canteen together, played sports together, went on weekend excursions together – if in subgroups, always with a subgroup of their class.

So I was surprised when, during the spring semester, a young woman named Teresa began waiting in the classroom after her peers left. She made a ruse of needing to talk to me, but it continued day after day, and she seemed forlorn. I noticed her eating alone in the cafeteria, and when her classmates came to my apartment for evening free talks she wasn’t among them.

For the first part of the term Teresa had been symbiotically bonded to her classmate Emily. Then one day she took a seat on the other side of the classroom and avoided eye contact with anyone.

I have no idea what made her an outcast. Certainly no one discussed it with me – as both teacher and foreigner I was outside the group, and this was an insider issue. It bothered me so much I asked the class leader about it. He merely shook his head and said, “It is complicated.” From his expression I could tell it wasn’t my place to be asking. To this day I have no idea what could have caused her, in such a group-oriented culture, to be so suddenly cut off from her peers.

In my memory her exile lasted through the rest of the term, but in a stack of photographs from our karaoke night at the semester’s end she is there, sitting in a plush chair, smiling as one of the more outgoing men in her class talks with her. I’m glad for this reminder that she hadn’t been a permanent pariah, because all I remember is the awfulness of seeing her alone day after day, separated from her former friends, away from home and family, looking utterly afflicted.

Students followed my “driving directions” to build a construction-paper city, placing one building at a time.

City completed: a sense of accomplishment.

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