‘TILL TUESDAY

Tuesdays are my worst days. This past Tuesday (Halloween) was the worst of my worst days. The reason Tuesdays sucks so badly is that while I only have three classes, two of the three are the worst classes. The class that doesn’t suck is a Kindergarten class and that’s not so much a “class” as four classes packed into an hour. So, by “worst” I don’t mean that their English is bad. I mean that they just don’t give a damn.

I started with the famously bad class in grade 8. Even the other teachers know about the class. They say that out of the whole school, that class is the hardest to teach. Something about it just doesn’t work.

Normally, I’m able to hold the attention of at least a few of the students the whole period and most of the students at least a fraction of the period. However, on Halloween, I could have set myself on fire and they still would have not looked up. I officially gave up when one student started chatting on her cell.

Clearly they didn’t want my lesson and I have no interest in having my time wasted. Yes, I’ve had Chinese teachers in the class with me but sooner or later we need to work out our own equilibrium if I am ever to teach effectively with them. Consequently, I simply wrote on the board, “Tell me what is interesting to you. I will talk about anything” and I stopped speaking.

After about five minutes of my silence, the class got nervous. They asked me what was wrong and I said, “You do not want my class. Tell me what class you want and I will do that.” Then I tapped the board by the words I had written, as their capacity for written English is infinitely better than their capacity for oral English. They looked at me blankly and then nervously at each other. I started taking notes in my book about the next class because if my time is going to be treated (at best) like study hall, I’m going to use the time as my own. I think the indecipherable notes I was taking made them even more nervous. Consequently, someone finally got up and got their homeroom teacher. We then chatted a bit before I got back into the lesson.

Of course, as I started the actual lesson, the bell rang and I was off to my next class. In the fifteen-minute break between classes, I returned to the teacher’s office to speak with my beloved colleague and explain to him that I am simply incapable of teaching that class. Perhaps the platitude of “There are no bad students, simply teachers who don’t know how to teach” is true. Regardless, the fact remains that there exists a divide between myself and the forty students of that class which I am currently unable to bridge by myself in 45 minutes a week and so I sought out my beloved colleague for advice.

We had a brief discussion about the Old versus New School methods and he explained how, sometimes, Old School methods are simply more effective. The main problem I have with that is not that corporal punishment and yelling are “bad,” (though I freely admit I am not comfortable using them as standard methods of reinforcement; it was not a part of my upbringing so I have no parameters for such things) but that I am unaware of lines of cultural propriety here in China. Being too pleasant is one thing. Being too ugly is an entirely different ball of wax. Things I would never do are done regularly here just as things I would think to do first are taboo. Not to mention the ultimate issue of the idea that I am “Foreigner” first, “Teacher” second, “Lao she” third and finally, “Christina.” I am not an individual, per say. Rather, I am their collective notion of the West. It’s Hollywood, my predecessor, Coke, Oil of Olay and me, folks. That’s what they know of the West out here. Currently, I am the bulk of their knowledge as I am more available than my predecessor, cheaper than a movie ticket and often more animated than Coke and Oil of Olay. Consequently, if I overstep my boundaries, the West oversteps it boundaries. Being a student is a critical time period in which foundations are shaped and while I do not condone disrespect of any kind, I’m not about to start cracking skulls to enforce obedience.

We spoke briefly and he went to speak to the homeroom teacher for me as I went to my next class. The next class is notably naughty in that their English is actually quite good but they are utterly terrified of speaking because everyone is savage when it comes to criticizing the mistakes of those who dare to try. Frankly, it is a decidedly American class. Consequently, they allow themselves to wallow in their fear and do everything in their power to avoid working on oral English. The only time they work on oral English, they do it to make fun of the less-than-stunning young women.

So, I showed up at the class and the first thing everyone asked was if they could go to the bathroom. As they are always going to the “bathroom” to not return, I said, “No. Sit down.”

I did everything I could to wrangle them into some semblance of a class. I’ve spent many an afternoon with these students trying different approaches to teaching them English and very little works. So, I’m currently trying to simply herd the cats into a standard lesson.

The issue with this is that the more rambunctious boys simply decided they want nothing to do with the lesson at all and took to scurrying about the room as I turned to write on the board. Eventually, I had enough and threw them out of the room, one at a time. (I don’t know where the lines of propriety for serious punishment are here but my counterparts do and they often roam the halls. So, being tossed out of my class is a serious problem for them if they’re caught out there.) Eventually, I had thrown out four boys in a class of forty.

As I tossed the first boy out for climbing on his desk, my immediate boss just happened to be passing by. As I slam the door behind the first boy, I saw the profile of my benevolent boss strolling by. The three other boys started running about the room and I threw them out in rapid succession.

The rest of the class saw the fate that befell the four boys and shaped up rather quickly. Chatting with me, despite me, is a lot more appealing than having the dean of the school livid with you and on the phone to your parents.

I finished the class and went home in a funk. I was just so pissed off about my shortcomings as a teacher and this impenetrable wall of ambivalence that I couldn’t focus on anything. I decided to go for a brisk walk to clear my head as exercise always helps me focus. I returned as irritated as I left. I then decided to do some yoga to force myself to focus. Instead, I couldn’t focus and kept tumbling over, out of each position as the frustrations of the day came flooding back.
I was most irritated with the fact that maybe I’m going about this all entirely wrong. Maybe all of my foundations are incorrect and I really, truly have nothing to offer these students. Perhaps I’m just some trite little nothing that doesn’t help but simply attracts money for the parents. I had the nagging suspicion that I was fooling myself into believing I might actually matter. Us Americans have a habit of doing that, I hear.

I was in a funk most of Wednesday but my primary school babies managed to lift me out of it a bit. Then, Wednesday night, I watch “The Quiet American” and felt quite a bit better.

I love that film. The idea that inexperienced innocence is one of the most damaging things really speaks to me. I see the ignorant inexperience of Americans everywhere downtown. I see the inexperienced idealism about the “right” and “wrong” of the West anytime I’m near the tourist attractions either here or any of the other “tourist attraction” cities I’ve called home. I find incredible comfort in that, for all my faults, I’m not really in that headspace. I fool myself about a lot but I don’t really want to save anyone from themselves. I’m relatively aware of the line between the things I find “comfortable” and the things I find “right” and I do my best to not tout my comfort as virtue.

There’s a line in “The Quiet American” that I had never noticed before. Pyle, the idealistic and ignorant American, talks about how the whole country is the woman he loves; “a taxi dancer who comes from a good family and is now unable to find a suitable husband because of her a rich, old European lover.” The great fault in that logic is that as a Westerner, you presume you see the entirety of the country. Everywhere has people with tragic stories that need to be saved and people who are just find and don’t need our help. “Communism” certainly doesn’t cause those stories to swell anymore than any other revolution. Not to mention, the people who need to be saved tend to be more available to the foreigners by virtue of their inability to do for themselves. Hell, when I walk downtown and I see the poorest of the poor putting their birth defects on display for the Westerners to pity. You will note that none of the beggars harass the Chinese, not because the Chinese are more brutal than the Westerners but because the Chinese understand it’s an act. We have the genetically deformed and the impoverished in this part of the city too but here is where they live; there is no flourish around their downtrodden state. Here they simply live their lives as people. I think it is inexperienced innocence that tends to drive us to think that the fringe element looking to prey on your pity properly represents a nation.