Teaching for dummies

If we really thought about it, I bet most of us would agree that junior high was the worst few years of our lives. Your body is changing and so are your social roles, you are ruled by a whirlwind of hormones and sometimes you want to act like an adult but aren't allowed to, while other times you expected to act like a grown-up but don't want to. It takes a truly brave, and possibly crazy, person to willingly stand up in front of a group of these awkward creatures day in and day out, year after year trying to cram some knowledge into their preoccupied brains. To junior high teachers of the world, I salute you.
I did not want to teach junior high. In fact, in my interview I said "I'll teach anything but middle school" and they hired me anyway...and then assigned me to 7th and 8th grade. No matter what country you are in or what language you teach, it is scary to stand in front of a group of 50+ teenagers who constantly giggle, pass notes, and hit each other; and the fact that we can barely understand each other makes it down right terrifying. Luckily for me I have a very powerful weapon on my side: Chinese teachers.
As you can easily believe, the Chinese education system is a world apart from its American counterpart. The days are long and class sizes are huge, teachers move classroom to classroom while the students stay in their room with the same pool of classmates all day, and the preferred teaching style is like a college lecture, rather than the interactive multiple-intelligences approach we prefer in the States. The tests are hard, standards are high, and failure really is an option (the look on the teachers' faces when I tried to explain the "No Child Left Behind" act was priceless, it is simply unfathomable from their perspective). The atmosphere is extremely competitive and every kid knows their exact rank in their class in every subject: the highest are praised and the lowest are shamed. Misbehavior is not tolerated and the punishments are real; kids are not simply sent to the principles office for an "I'm disappointed" speech, rather, they are reamed by a screaming teacher in front of the class, made to stand in corners or on balconies for periods of time, and sometimes even spanked. To these kids an angry teacher is a terrifying force, even I'm a little afraid of them.
Now, my job as the wai laoshi ("foreign teacher" 外老师) is to be the fun teacher. I'm expected to play games, get them to talk a lot, and basically sit around being the token white person. In theory this should be an awesome gig: the kids automatically love my class and I'm essentially goofing off everyday. If only. The problem is that only about a third of the kids ever understand what I'm saying, and those students only understand about half the time (if I speak slowly enough, repeat myself a few times, draw pictures, and write on the board a lot). Something as simple as "get out a piece of paper and a pencil", accompanied by me holding up a pencil and waving a piece of paper in the air, will only result in half the class having both items in front of them. This is understandably frustrating for all parties involved, so the kids will often do what bored teenagers do: the opposite of what the adult in charge wants.
I have decided (for better or for worse) that if they aren't going to listen to me, then as long as they are quiet I don't really care what they are doing. On a regular basis I have kids who sleep, read, do homework, etc. while I'm teaching and I let it go. I have also accepted a certain level of general talking on the assumption that the kids who understand are trying to help the ones who don't. Occasionally (except in the case of 2 classes, with them it is every time) I will have one or more kids who aren't interested in listening to me and would rather spend their time hitting their friends or trying to be the class clown. For these kids I have a simple system: for the first offense they sit in a chair at the front of the room, if they continue to be disruptive they have to stand behind the door, and if they are still a problem they are kicked out of class and have to sign a piece of paper saying "I will not ___ in English class" which is turned in to their head teacher. For most kids, having to sit in front of the room is plenty of punishment and stops the issue (keep in mind that "saving face" is a huge deal in this country). I have, however, kicked a handful of kids out of class and all hell has rained down on them.
My latest and greatest class of demons was the most frustrating by far. The first kid to sit in the chair at the front continued to yell and talk, then refused to stand behind the door. For that I tried to punish the whole class for his behavior (in an attempt to incur the wrath of his peers) by giving them a test. It adds an entirely new level of frustration when you can't even punish a class because they don't understand enough of what you say to even realize they are in trouble (though I did make myself feel a little better by making the last question "Whose fault is it that we are taking this test?"...no one got it...). When that route proved useless, I grabbed him by the collar and threw his ass outside. No sooner had he been tossed, then another kid was in the chair. He was quickly thrown behind the door where he continued to be disruptive, and as I was yelling at him and the class, the head teacher showed up.
Apparently some teacher had happened by, saw the kid standing outside and went to fetch the head teacher for me. He came into the classroom, asked me something that I couldn't understand, then took off with both kids who were in trouble and some other kid who, presumably, was going to explain what had happened since I obviously couldn't. The rest of class went much smoother, but my nerves and emotions were pretty much shot for the day.
The next day I was apprehensive going into class, but I put on my best teacher face and went for it. All three classes went pretty smoothly, with controllable amounts of mischief and I was feeling much better. After the last class of the day, a boy came up to me and handed me a folded up note. He said that it was from his friend who was very, very sorry and wanted me to read this. I had no idea who he was talking about (though I suspect it was him, not some friend) and what exactly a kid in that class was very, very sorry for, but I took the note and said "thanks". The last of my frustration from the previous day melted away and I laughed out loud when I read this poor kids note:


I wanted to say sorry to you!
Last lesson, I throwed a rubbish. I don't want to throw this to you. I only wanted to throw rubbish to one student.
For these reasons I wante to say sorry to you!

(signed) A bad student
2008.10.16

Remember don't say this to my teacher!
Thank you!


I guess that if they aren't all good, then they can't all be bad either. Maybe this teaching thing isn't so terrible after all.