Shanghai Live - American teaches art at local middle school

Welcome to this edition of foreign freinds. This month we're looking at some of the expats who are teaching in the city. Tonight, reporter Xu Fangliang introduces us to an American who's in her first teaching job in Shanghai. For the past year and a half, Emily Osann's teaching day usually begins at 9:25am, and she has four classes a day. She's showing her 8th grade students how to do animation by simply moving different pictures. These are some of her 160 students in grades 6 through 11 at the Shanghai United International School. "She has lots of ideas. Like last time we used to make a bag, like a real bag for us. And now we are doing animations. She doesn't treat us like students. I mean, no punishment, and not really controlling us. She's like enjoying being a teacher and let us enjoy being a student. It feels like she's our friend," said Hannah Yu. Osann says she wanted to be an art teacher ever since her university days back in the United States. She's now 33 years old. After coming to Shanghai with her family seven years ago, she says she spent her first five years here doing graphic design and volunteer work before finally getting her teaching certificate in 2011. She says she cherishes her job and her students. "Especially as an art teacher, there has to be a lot of room for individuality and creativity and flexibility. And also encouraging students to really try things. A lot of the students that we get are... some of them come from local stream. Chinese classes where they learned art in a particular way. They often have very strong drawing and technical skills, but they don't want to make a mistake. They are afraid, they know that they will be marked off if they make a mistake. Whereas, I really think they've got to make mistakes. And that's how you learn. So that definitely plays into how I teach." Osann says one of the things she likes best about being an art teacher is designing her curriculum with a colleague in the art department. And she says decorating this corridor with mosaics was her idea. She says she was amazed by the way different materials can work together so well. But her boss says achieving this beauty wasn't easy. "Simple things like getting materials into the school, getting the right things, explaining what you want and getting them to get exactly the right things for you. And then miscommunication all the time. So it's quite a thing to deal with. And I've seen Emily flustered, but I've seen her really improve over this year in particular. She's getting into the swing of things, understood how the school's working and bended and being really flexible to the environment," said Kay Rambaud. Osann is going back to the United States during the summer break, but says she'll be back in the fall because she wants to spend at least one more year here. When she's not at school, she's taking care of her 8 and 13 year old daughters, and a husband who travels a lot on business. She says her busy day starts at 5:30 in the morning, but she tries to make time for relaxation. "Actually, the other art teacher and I, and a couple other teachers at the school have started, we do exercises in the school after the school's gone. So we have like kickboxing and yoga. And we have no time otherwise, so we figured if we don't do it when we have the chance, then we never get it." And after yoga, it's family time until 10pm.