The Chinese School

Kunming International Academy shares a building with a local Chinese school. The building is split down the middle between KIA and the Chinese JK-8 school, with KIA occupying the entire top floor (this is where Eric and I teach). There is a large auditorium at the end of the building that we both share.

The front of our building. Excepting the fifth floor, the area to the right of the red Chinese characters on the white signs is the territory of the Chinese School.

The Chinese School.

Every morning we are greeted at the entry gate by a small delegation from the Chinese school with an enthusiastic, “Good morning, Teacher”! (I have to admit that grammatically speaking, I have no clue if that exclamation point is supposed to go in the quotes or outside the quotes). It was somewhat shocking at first to walk through the gauntlet and be yelled at by a bunch of kids in powder blue sweat suits and red scarves, but it is pretty routine now. The powder blue sweat suits with accompanying red scarves are their dress down uniforms. Every once in a while (I don’t know what days they are yet) they wear their dress up school uniforms which are a more traditional navy blue sweater and pants/skirt.

The Chinese students waiting to greet arriving students and teachers.

On Monday mornings the Chinese school starts the day off with their flag raising ceremony. The kids line up in perfect rows in our school courtyard and with the Chinese national anthem blasting, they raise the courtyard flag and then recite what I believe is their equivalent to the Pledge of Allegiance. It is actually quite cool to watch.

The Chinese school starts at roughly the same time we do (8am for KIA teachers, 8:30 for KIA students; 8am for the Chinese school), but they don’t get out until 6:30pm! The older kids start their school day off by cleaning the school for an hour or so. It is not uncommon to see a bunch of them mopping the corridors in the morning. The younger kids go straight to class.  After lunch the younger kids have nap time for an hour or two before returning to regular classes. KIA students get out at 3:30 and about the time Eric and I are eating dinner, the Chinese school kids are finally getting out of school.