Dispatches from the Classroom

Teaching has been quite the... experience. First off, I think it is important to view this as a means to an end. To do otherwise just seems to be asking to get in line with the crusty old career teachers-our coworkers. We get paid an unfair amount of money to do moderately difficult work that entails equal parts entertaining and teaching. Libby was initially shocked this isn’t just nanny work, but then again, when one of our Vietnamese counterparts for example, has an electrical engineering degree but teaches English instead because some of his engineer friends with first-rate jobs have 450 dollar a month salaries, it’s good to approach our job with some degree of integrity. That being said, this isn’t teaching. And it isn’t teaching in the same sense as teaching in a developed country. You do the best you can do, and your best is ALWAYS good enough.  (because when it comes down to it, your English will always be better than your student’s).   A lot of the crusty old guys and some of their younger followers are quite jaded over surface level concerns- yeah the model is customer driven, the customer is always right. Yeah our language school is profit driven-but we’re profiting as a direct result too (re: that whole engineer thing). Yeah they stick autistic children willy-nilly in the classes, which is a major distraction, but the two kids I’ve seen have had what appears to be moderate Asperger’s which in no way impedes their cognitive ability, even though the rest of the kids shun them to a corner.  

Legitimate issues do exist. Though there seem to be a boatload of alternative teaching opportunities, so I don’t see why people don’t just switch jobs before basking in their self-imposed misery. A lot of the classes are too large (the largest being about 24 people), but I’m pretty sure that’s a universal teacher complaint.  We teach for 2 or 3 hour blocks, which is too long for anyone’s good. More frequent shorter meetings would go a long way for their learning development. For the majority of the classes, participation and focus isn’t a problem, though there are always a few bad apples. That being said, in all classes below a certain proficiency level there is a Vietnamese TA that serves a dual purpose of translation and discipline.  The problem is with the teenagers, who don’t have a TA. A lot of them have to spend their Friday and Saturday night 6-9 or 6:30-9:30 learning English. So yeah, entertaining plays a big role in our teaching because as the most level-headed of our coworkers pointed out, these are their Friday and Saturday nights. So yeah they can get a little rowdy, and yeah they can be disinterested, and yeah their parents could be sending them here just to get a little time away from the kids, but they still come. My only complaint is that they don’t have the discipline I saw in Korea (and which must exist in Japan-number 1 Asia power), which was bordering on superhuman. Must be the tropical heat. Or something. Anyways it’s kind of fun getting to play games.

The most difficult part about our job is the unbelievable variety in students. Libby teaches 4-5 year olds learning the alphabet, I’m a boy/girl one day and then police officers the next day (we’ll have to wait and see on the police officers, she’s teaching them as we speak and apparently the classes are government funded which means participation is REALLY a problem…but word on that later). And then there is everything in between: 6-8 year old beginners, 8-10 year olds, 11 year olds which are the worst because they have learned how to be bad and exaggerate boredom, teenagers, and college students/adults.  I’m still learning how to be bubbly and silly enough for the children and Libby is struggling with how to entertain adults without treating them like children.  With every new class, comes 3 new books and every age has multiple levels, so our bookshelf is now filled with multiple colors.  While quite a struggle lugging them to the nearby coffee shop for lesson planning, it is nice how much guidance and resources the teacher’s books have especially when we hear about teachers in other schools who have to come up with everything themselves.   

The coworkers as I’ve alluded to are quite an interesting cast of characters as well. There’s a couple very nice, normal and levelheaded teachers that mostly get drowned out by the loud, jaded and crusty old teachers in the teacher’s lounge. Apparently quite a few of the old teachers in the gang left recently so maybe they are just still in mourning. There are a few older (40s-50s) teachers who aren’t crusty or jaded, they’re fun mostly just to watch.  One older Brit loves Burger King and goes out to get it most every day.  Another is a gigantic black man named Ron who had a HILARIOUS diatribe over how this is like Disneyland compared to his NYC inner city PE teaching days in response to the dourest Brit of the whole lot-one of the crusty crew’s acolytes. This guy really is a hoot. We are supposed to wear shirt tucked in with ties every day. His shirt is so tight that like the buttons pull apart and expose his skin (also his shirt is so small and tight that he can’t physically tuck it in). He finally showed up to work a few days ago with a belt which honestly and truly was one of those tiny belts girls wear around dresses. He’s a philosophy major who wants to join the RAF which is also kind of funny. Best of all though was his rant about the degradation of English culture and the excess of cynicism and envy-which I agreed with initially. As time went on though he continued to exemplify this very excess of cynicism to the point where I thought it’s people like him that are England’s real problem!   It’s all so new that I can’t help but feel like my opinion of this whole foray will change repeatedly in the coming weeks and months. For now, it’s pretty good.