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e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s has an interview with the publisher who accepted my book of Japan poems, How to Drink a Floral Moon.

I know you’ve felt your incarceration was wrong from the start. Of course, you were raised to believe that the laws that apply to normal people don’t apply to you. I’ve seen a few articles about your most recent hearing, and I find the spectacle of a woman about my age screaming for her mommy to make it right appalling– but, then again, I suppose I haven’t had the disadvantage of a wealthy family that can save me from darn near everything. However, I have to agree that your hearing wasn’t exactly fair. That the judge refused to meet with the sheriff and medical personnel seems to suggest that he was more interested demonstrating that he wasn’t going to give special treatment to a celebrity than in actually treating you like a normal human being.

However, your sentence isn’t so long and the conditions under which you’re being kept nowhere near as bad as those inflicted on others who have faced unfair hearings or who, unlike you, have been convicted of crimes they did not commit. Maybe your little taste of that could teach you some empathy for these people. You could start to use your wealth and celebrity status to do something worthwhile. Amnesty International and The Innocence Project would be good places to start.

For the final exam for my English majors, I’ve decided to ask each student their opinion about something and then have a brief debate (just long enough for me to evaluate their progress in areas such as organization and pronunciation). So that I can evaluate their fluency as well, I want to make sure that they don’t know what the question is ahead of time. Ideally, this would mean having a different question for each student. Because their are ninety of them, I’ve decided to appeal to you, my readers, for suggestions. (Note that these are fairly advanced students, but they lack a lot of specialized vocabulary.)

I was going write a post about how, after months of feasting mosquitoes and weeks of humming cicadas, the dragonfly armadas have finally arrived, black with bars of opalescent white or brilliant yellow. I was going to explain how, on my daily runs around campus, jogging shoulder-to-wing with them makes me feel as if I, too, could learn to fly.

Instead, I thought I’d give you a little background on the riots in Zhengzhou. First, I should note that my college is a forty minute drive from the downtown area, so it’s probably not surprising that I learned about the riots via the Internet. It’s also highly unlikely that any of my students here were involved, thanks to Shengda’s closed-campus policy.

The riots apparently broke out in response to city inspectors’ assault on a female student who was allegedly selling things on the street without a permit. Street vendors without permits are not unusual here; the police periodically sweep through the night market just outside the college gates– but the sellers reappear a few days later. It doesn’t entirely surprise me that students here would respond to seeing the use of brutal force in such an operation by rioting. When I was waiting for my train ticket for the May holiday and the police arrived to force everyone into formal lines, there was a lot of anger– and some pushing back; most of the people there that day were students from various local universities.

The Reuters article also briefly alludes to the riots that took place here last June after students found out that their diplomas would bear the name of the institution they attended, rather than that of the better-known Zhengzhou University with which it is affiliated. That it couldn’t have been the same students involved in both riots (again, because Shengda has a closed campus, and those who took part last year were mostly seniors) suggests that this tendency to fight back has broad social causes.

Indeed, the same article concludes: A widening gap between rich and poor, corruption and official abuses of power have fueled demonstrations and riots around the country that are often sparked by seemingly minor issues. This is especially applicable to Henan Province.  Despite its location in the Yellow River Valley, one of the cradles of civilization, and a history that includes two early capitals of the Middle Kingdom, Henan remains underdeveloped.  It is China’s most densely populated province yet lacks the same quality of infrastructure that other provinces have.  (Visiting next-door Shandong Province made this quite clear to me.)  Many of my students are farmers’ children whose parents have had to borrow money from everyone in their village to send them here.

These young adults have a lot of reason to be angry.  Combine that with their intense commitment to study, and you get an incredible amount of potential here.

The semester is winding down for me: I’m in the process of reviewing with my classes to prepare them for finals.  Since the next two weeks will be full of individual appointments for oral exams (as oral finals have to be completed before the other finals begin– which would’ve been nice to know when I was planning my courses), I want to spend some time now reflecting on my work this term.

My non-English majors, overall, made very little progress.  This was partly because the sections had about sixty people each.  I couldn’t give individual attention to everyone.  An even bigger factor, however, was that most of the students simply didn’t care.  They don’t get to choose their courses, and a lot of them really just wanted to focus on studying for their major exams.  In a way, I can’t blame them.  I do believe, however, that they might have improved a little if they had actually done the partner and group work I gave them instead of reading books for other classes.  The students who did do so improved.

I can’t hold myself completely responsible for the lack of participation, as these students are adults.  Yes, I need to make things interesting, but the only things that seemed to get everyone involved were tongue twisters and word relays.  While these are fun and have some educational value, I’d have done a disservice to the students who really wanted to learn English if I’d used them to the exclusion of practicing real conversations.

A few students were converted to the “real effort” crowd after not doing as well as they would’ve liked on their midterms.  Most who weren’t happy with their scores, however, just asked me to change them (and used incomplete sentences to do so).  I’m hoping that making a discussion of their participation grade part of the final will have some sort of effect on their future classroom behavior– but I’m not counting on any epiphanies.

My English majors, in contrast, don’t need that sort of needling.  They did, afterall, request homework from me on the first day of class.  One of my major goals, because they’re all freshmen, was to teach them how to study effectively.  We discussed ways to improve different skills at various times throughout the term, and I required them to keep vocabulary journals during the first half.  During the second half, I divided them into four groups, with each group being responsible for planning two lessons (with each lesson taking up half of a two-hour period, leaving me time to lead a feedback session as well as to teach new language).

Because I gave them a structure to use in their planning, and because they’re  very motivated, the lessons they planned generally went well.  One recurring problem was omitting critical steps or blending together different stages in a way that reduced the ability of other students to participate.  In the future, I think I’ll introduce this more slowly (have them plan a warm-up first, then add a listening section, and so on) so that they’ll get a clearer idea of the meaning and value of each step.

Another thing I noticed during the student-led lessons is that a number of them had picked up a basic form of Socratic Method.  This might be because I tend to use it not just for eliciting language or grammar rules, but also when I’m playing Devil’s advocate to encourage expansion and discussion.  At any rate, I want to make that a more explicit part of my classes next semester.  I plan to do a bit of research on using Socratic Method in the ELL classroom this summer, so if anyone knows any good resources, please drop me a line.