Think of the Children

I taught yesterday. Pretty much, I'm a bad teacher. It might have gone better had I been sent home with the right teacher's guide. But the theory here is students will absorb English simply by staring at my wonderful white face for a couple hours a week.

I had some time before my class started so I went to chill in the teacher office that's connected to the preschool my cram school also runs. While I waited, a woman came in and handed me an 18-month-old. I bounced him on my hip and said "cute" in Chinese. She agreed. Then she threw a pair of clean pants over the kid's head and made the international sign for "change him."

Okay. I'm overpaid anyway, I figured, I can add baby changing to my repertoire.

Class started at 4:30. At 4:31 I found out I read the wrong teacher's guide, thanks to some vigorous head shaking on the part of my students.

All my students have English names they go by in class. This is great because there isn't any way I'm going to memorize a dozen Chinese names. I still have trouble distinguishing between "bus stop" and "shower," between "soup" and "pain." Don't ask me to do names.

Most of them have names suited for Midwest farm kids - Susan, Richard, Hank. A few got stuck with stumpers like "Racky," "Cavey" and, the kicker, "Lawn."

After I ran out of impromptu lesson material, which took about five minutes, I resorted to playing twenty questions with my darling pupils. For every new round one girl consistently asked, "Is it a black man?" Unfortunately for her "it" was Harry Potter, Mario and the Taiwan girl rock band "She," but it never was a black man. Maybe next time.

Then I asked them to each say why they are learning English. Some mentioned business. A couple said parents.

"What about school? Would anyone like to go to school, to a university, in America?" I ask. Me thinking: Aren't all Asian kids genetically programmed to send an application to Ivies when they hit 17?

"English text books easy." one girl replied. What I think she was saying is she's becoming fluent in English - an incredibly hard language to learn well - so she can go to easier school. For a split second I felt defensive. Like, hey, I didn't think school was so easy. Then I remembered I was never a 12-year-old girl stuck in class at 8 p.m. on a Friday night mastering the past perfect verb tense in a foreign language. What the hell do I know about school?

After some hangman, a bit of reading and a partner activity - it was time to go home.

Not sure how I'm going to keep this teacher ruse up for months on end.