international commun... what?

Yesterday, the UN imposed sanctions on North Korea giving me a perfect teaching moment when a real-life example reinforces a classroom lesson.  I’m always grateful when this happens.  Relevancy motivates students to learn.  It motivates me to learn.

Now only two weeks into the spring semester and it’s clear I’m totally out of my teaching comfort zone, to put it very mildly.  Last fall when the International Relations Department told me I’d teach International Communication and Negotiation in the spring, the overeducated side of my brain said, “I can’t do that! I’m not certified in that subject! I know nothing about it!”  But then the Peace Corps side of my brain overruled, so I simply said, “I know nothing about that subject.”  The dean ignored this, telling me to have a syllabus ready by November 1^st, that a textbook would be written and they needed to apply for grants.

If nothing else, I’m a good researcher.  During the moments when I had both a stable Internet and a stable VPN, my keyboard sizzled as I frantically dumbed documents, links, ppts, and PDFs into files.  It didn’t take long to realize the scope of my problem designing this course.  Basically, I’m trying to cram a graduate degree worth of information into a single course for very unworldly sophomore university students with almost, but not quite, fluent English language skills.  Feeling a time pressure, I did what we all do in these circumstances; I pulled something, anything, together.  And that’s how I submitted a ridiculous and impossible course plan that I foolishly expected to be a rough draft, a starting point.  When it was approved, I actually laughed at my folly.  Now what?

There’s more trouble.  I have a western bias.  It true.  How can I teach this class on international communication and negotiation in a politically neutral way, leaving out my “western style” or “low context culture”?  I find myself saying over and over, “There’s no right or wrong way to communicate, just different cultures and styles.”  But, I don’t believe it.  I think open, direct, honest communication is best, and it's exactly opposite of the way the Chinese communicate.  My students know this; they see me every week using American teaching strategies.  To their credit, they participate and try even when they are uncomfortable with some activities that while mainstream in the US (collaborative groups) are nontraditional in China.

I’m being monitored not only by the “class monitor” who is present in every class, but also by a teacher who is supposed to head-up the textbook writing committee for this course.  I understand why she is there; it just makes me more than a little self-conscious with my western bias and teaching style.  She was visibly confused as the students worked in small groups and all the groups were talking at once.  I admit it was loud, a possible marker for on-task, engaged students.

One part of this week’s lesson was on how the United Nations works.  Taking what I hoped was a politically neutral tone, I tried to explain why it is important that China helped write the sanctions against North Korea and why China’s involvement is so important to maintaining peace, and why they as individuals should care about what is going on.  It’s this last point that I want to emphasize with them, and I hope I don’t get into trouble for it.  Individualism is not a Chinese value.  However this course goes this semester, at the very least I hope my students will develop a more global perspective because eventually some of them will work for the Chinese government in diplomacy.  SISU is one of China's important  universities for training diplomats.