Show and Tell

The first project that was undertaken in the speaking classes that I’ve been teaching was, I thought, quite a simple one, and many students came up with extremely creative takes on the idea of a “Show and Tell.” I pitched the exercise as an extension of the introductory process that had been going on throughout the first several weeks of the semester, and told them that they should try to pick an object that would help them to explain to the class something about themselves that most people, including their friends, may not have known otherwise. Some truly used their objects to bring into discussion something personal and interesting, and some students presented on material that had them in tears by the conclusion of their brief, 5-minute talk. Others brought in no object at all but conducted a discussion as if there was something there beside them. Other students used the time to wax wise or poetic or recent current events. Some of the presentations that got away from my initial intentions for the project proved to be the most thought-provoking or response-generating—particularly those that delved into hot political or social issues. All in all, over the past several weeks I’ve heard somewhere around 100 Show and Tells that have run the whole gamut from good to bad, appropriate to inappropriate, interesting to unbelievably boring. The reason that this post in only being put up now was because the project set me up with an absolute truckload of grading to do, and I’m only now digging out from under the pile.

Here are brief synopses of a few of my favorite ones.

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On the day when I first explained the assignment, I wasn’t expecting that anyone would be chomping at the bit to get up in front of the class to offer everyone an example of a Show and Tell, but a new student in one of my advanced classes raised his hand when I asked for any volunteers. He got up from his desk in the front of the class and loped up to the lectern, where he took out of his pocket a largish red pin with the an infamous profile pressed on it in gold. “As you all must know,” he began, “this pin contains the likeness of Chairman Mao.” I tightened up and clenched my teeth slightly—I had thus far avoided any sensitive political discussion in class, and I was not prepared for this. “Many Chinese have a very complicated relationship with the legacy of Chairman Mao, I know. He made many bad decisions,” he continued, and I forced myself to straighten up in my chair and hide the tension that I felt building in the classroom.

“I believe, however” the freshman continued, “that there are many good things that a young Chinese man like myself can learn from the life of Chairman Mao. He was an idealist, as many young people are, but he also had the resolve to try to turn those ideas into reality. Some of them were successful and many of them were not, but regardless Mao is the one who is largely responsible for the success China enjoys today. For his willingness to not be just a man of poetry and ideas but also a man of action, I respect Chairman Mao and his legacy.”

I didn’t really know what to say. I would soon learn that this student had studied abroad for a semester at Cornell on an elite scholarship awarded to incoming Tsinghua freshman, but I didn’t know that then. I saw that some of his ideas were misinformed and quite dangerous, but his level of circumspection and eloquence was striking. At the conclusion of his speech, the students offered the biggest round of applause I’ve heard in class this semester.

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One of the first presentations given in front of one of my non-English major, upper-classmen classes involved a engineer standing up, walking to the front of the classroom, composing himself, then tearing from a scabbard on his hip a “scimitar” (as he described it) that he proceeded to wave around as he danced as if engaged in a swordfight. He then took a massive imaginary gulp from the embroidered wine sack hanging over his shoulder, and recommenced the swordfight, this time staggering around a bit. After maybe 30 seconds to a minute, he stopped, and began his oral presentation, which dealt with his trip over the National Day holiday break to Inner Mongolia, where he bought the scimitar and wine sack and where he met the Mongolians that he was here trying to impersonate for the class. As he explained, however, the smallish scimitars were used primarily for slaughtering animals and for other utilitarian purposes. According to the student, all Mongolian men carried one, all the time. I suppose that the fights break out when the scimitars and combined with the wine sacks, as per his demonstration.

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A freshman English major who had previously not said a word in class came to the front of the class and spent the first minute or two of a five-minute presentation profusely thanking everyone in advance for their attention and thanking Mr. Meenan for organizing this especially interesting project for the class. (Earlier in the semester, when I had asked each freshman to present me with a “business card” that contained a photo as well as some personal information, where his name should have been he instead wrote: “If you don’t know me then you’re an Ignorant Newbie.” I was initially infuriated, but then realized a minute later that something had to be amiss. When I confronted him about it after class his face turned purple, and he said: “I was wondering when you would ask me… Someone played a joke on me, it was a mistake to listen to them. I’m so embarrassed.” All was of course immediately forgotten, and I instantly felt like a total jerk for jumping to the conclusions that I jumped to initially.) His presentation was about becoming the martial arts champion for his age group in his home province, and be had brought in to show to the class a kind of feather-covered mace that he was an expert in using. The mace looked like is had barbs sticking out of it, and the chain alone had to have weighed several pounds. He couldn’t demonstrate anything in the confined space of the classroom, but the rest of the class assured me that he was incredible. (He had given a demonstration at military training in late August that clearly made an impression.) As he played a little bit with the spiked ball and chain while speaking, I made a promise to myself that I would not respond with any attitude if in the future this student decides to intentionally call me any names.

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Another student in the same class began his speech by displaying an MP3 player for al of us. Several other students had also presented previously on PDAs, or MP3 players, or tape players, or CDs, or tapes, or DVDs. I kept trying as hard as I could to make it clear that this was not what I wanted—that I wanted something personal, unique, something that the class wouldn’t expect. He began by speaking about the different features that the player has, and about how much better it made his last birthday party because he was able to bring so much music along. He then took a different tack and began talking about the connection that the player has helped to forge between him and his father, who worked so much that he rarely had time to spend even on meals with his family. The MP3 player was a surprise present, and on the day that the student had received it his mother told him that his father had driven 700 kilometers and spent several weeks’ pay on the gadget. It was one of the first times he remembered, the student said, when he felt a kind of intimacy with and warmth from his Dad. The son realized that the father must in fact have been loving him all along.

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For the “Show” part of his presentation, one student showed a series of clips from different American sitcoms, including Gossip Girl, Friends, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was through American television, he explained, that he first began to gain experience with spoken English. He continued on to explain that his first experience with American TV shows dated back to his first episode of “The Growth of Pain.” For a moment, I was envisioning some kind of spinoff from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that had gone straight to DVD that was only available in China, but when he started talking about Mike, Ben, and Carol Seaver, I realized that he was in fact talking about “Growing Pains”—a favorite of mine as well.

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Another student from one of my upper-level speaking classes brought in a photograph of her and her brother to pass around to the class. He was one year older than her, she explained, but in many ways that gap seemed much larger. He was “her leader, her protector, her defender.” His leadership and love inspired her to work as best she could to make something significant out of her life, and she cited him as being the main reason why she was now attending such a prestigious university. When her brother went off to university—a very good but less prestigious school—things took a turn for the worse, however. With tears in her eyes, my student explained that, by the second semester of his freshman year, her brother had to withdraw from university because of video game addiction. (Freshman here, during the fall semester, are actually not allowed to have personal computers, due mostly to addiction fears. Several clinics for treating video game addiction have opened up around China. Some estimates believe that as many as several tens of millions of Chinese might be addicted to video games.) Her brother is still out of university, but she still finds in him the inspiration that she always has.

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A female student came up to the front of the room with a fountain pen in her hand. I braced myself for what could be a snore, but I had learned from previous presentations that many students did have a knack for generating interesting discussion out of the most mundane objects. As students passed around the pen, several exclamations of disbelief and admiration were heard. The student in front of the class went on to explain how she had received the pen during her internship at one of the most prestigious international law firms on the planet. The summer was brutal—tons of work, very little of it enjoyable. She began to see how, at this high-octane firm, even second- and third-year Chinese lawyers were handling grunt work that was no longer in the purview of white lawyers with the same amount of experience. One day, late in the summer, towards the end of the internship, she walked into a partner’s office and asked about the disparity. When the explanation she was given was not satisfactory, she told the partner that she was not interested in a job with the firm after the conclusion of her internship. She of course was not offered a job, but now is excited to pursue a career in law that—instead of assisting in mergers and acquisitions, real estate, and trade—“actually helps people.”