Today was probably my lowest day of teaching for the following reasons. I had to teach 4 Junior 2 classes which are the 12- 13 year olds(really enough said there,) I ran out of construction paper and the closest store to sell it is an hour by bus, and by the end of the day I lost my voice and my mind.
When i was 13 and knee deep in a pre-teen tantrums my grandmother always used to tell me that I wouldn't understand how frustrating and heart breaking it is to watch your teenagers turn on you and see you as the object of their struggle until you yourself were a parent, who is just trying to do what's right. She was right on, not that teaching and parenting are exactly the same, as I get to pack up my stuff when that bell rings and head home to pop in a dvd and forget the chaos with the help of some canned laughter eventually leading me into a two hour cat nap on the couch. I do however, see now that the problem with teenagers is that they need someone to blame because their lives are so out of control so they choose the first person who tries to lay any ounce of authority on them, introduce foreign English teacher Natalie. Not only am I trying to lay down some expectations and create some tangible results in the form of oral English skills, but at the same time these students see me as an extremely easy target.
I walk into the classroom and the students are already bouncing off the walls with boiling angst from the last ten classes of the day where they have been scolded, embarrassed, hit, doubted, ridiculed and driven into the ground with monotonous Chinese drilling. So, you can expect that the moment the bell rings for my class to begin these hormone raging, over worked, under exercised teenage students are ready to have a field day with the one authority figure who in their minds can't really cause them too much trouble. I obviously refuse to hit, scold, or ridicule a student when they act out (not saying that I wouldn't love to pull a chair out from under a student every now and then.) So I am left with more subtle forms of punishments to be used when there is a behavior porblem, which often times doesn't land with the impact I had intended especially when you are dealing with a group of eighty.
Today was just like any other day except for the fact that I knew I had a lesson plan that was going to hit on all the necessary criteria that makes for a great class ie, reviewing previous chapters which boost their confidence, using colorful visuals (handmade), giving clear examples of the grammar points in the beginning of the activity so no one was lost, role play involving a student led activity, and a collaborative project where the students get to make their own class UFO! What I have come to learn that no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put into something you really can't make a hormonal, insecure and frustrated teenager cooperate if they have already decided that its just not in the cards for that day.
I hope that I am painting a clear enough picture when I describe my Junior 2 students, because they in no way resemble that really smart and quiet Chinese kid who was in your Science class in sixth grade and always worked two chapters ahead of the rest of the class. That notion of a Chinese student is one that is born out of an specific cultural experience namely rooted in the pressures of being an immigrant and trying to work within a system that doesn't make allowances for non-native speaking, first generation students. Within the Chinese school system you have the full spectrum of students just like any typical American public middle school, the only difference being they're all Chinese and they're all extremely overworked. You have your nerds, suck ups, model students and then you have your too cool for middle school, latest trend wearing, mouthing off know it alls, followed by your angry, hyperactive, possibly ADD troublemakers. So in each class you have a good mix of each of these personality types and with a class size of about eighty students you can have multiple behavior problems all exploding at the same time.
The lesson was called "What were you doing when the UFO arrived?" The main grammar point was to talk about the past tense and work on using the pattern "what were you doing_________" and "I was________." Simple enough I thought as they had just been tested on this chapter the previous week. So we reviewed the words UFO, alien and reporter and then I asked two students to volunteer to be the reporters. These student took a series of questions outside to review for ten minutes. I had the same set of questions and I told the class they had just seen a UFO and they would have to describe it to me so I could draw it on the board. As they described the UFO and the alien I drew it on the board and then we reviewed it together before i erased the picture. Then i called the reporter students to come back inside and interview the students about the UFO they saw, while the reporters had to recreate the student's UFO with a drawing on the board. The lesson went pretty well but somehow every class got off course and led me to kick some students out, stop the entire activity and in one class just pack up and leave.
In one class I started by telling the students to get out their English books and turn to the chapter we would be reviewing and one of the students cursed like a little Chinese sailor-something pertaining to my mother when I came around to his desk and asked him where his book was. Another student told me not to call on him because he just wanted to sleep. Amidst all this there was the usual comic book reading, math homework desperately being copied, tape player being listen to, fire being lit in the back and general cocauphony of sound, it was a normal day in the Junior 2 classroom.
The thing that gets me the most is when the students talk about me in Chinese and think that I don't understand. In one class I made all the boys who were late from the soccer field stand outside in a line and say "Teacher Natalie, may I come in?" before they entered. After telling them to repeat it over and over because they wouldn't look me in the eyes or tried to get by with mumbling, finally nine out of ten of them came in and took their seats. The last student was the most difficult student though also very bright and knew exactly what he was supposed to say. He stood in the doorway and mumbled 'mayicomein?" I told him to repeat and he laughed straight at me and said "mayiNOcomein," and then looked at his buddy in the front row and in Chinese said "haha-but I don't want to come in!!" So I simply slammed the door at that moment and said, OK no problem!!! I tried to continue on with the class but was rudely distracted by a student who decided to hawk the biggest loggie so the whole class could hear not once but three times right onto the classroom floor. I then asked him to stand up and answer a question pertaining to the lesson and her merely shrugged his shoulders wound up again and hawk a big one right on the floor in front of me. "Out!!" he was out of there and went to join his buddies in the hall.
I then told the students (in Chinese so that I could be understood by everyone) that I felt that they didn't respect me or my class and that I could go to any other school in the county that wanted a foreign teacher. I told them that I really wanted to teach them English and that I left my family and came all the way from America to teach them and that I didn't feel like wasting my time if they didn't want to learn. Yet again one of the smart-ass students in the front row turned to his friend next to him and in Chinese said "Oh, do you miss your Mommy??" I turned to him and said "yes, I do, now OUT of the classroom!!!" So the class proceeded from there, as I had to take a deep breadth turn towards the black board and swallow the lump in my throat that was gaining strength and about ready to make me lose it in front my pre-teen army.
The hardest part about teaching this age group is that amongst all the trouble makers and kids who are constantly trying to find something to fight against or a way to prove themselves are the students who go unnoticed because they are getting by with good behavior. Most of the girls in my classes are fairly well behaved and are at least respectful to me even if they don't have the slightest idea of what's going on in English class. These girls though too often have to take the back seat to the negative attention that is given to the boys. I try to focus on the good that is accomplished in my classes whenever a students is brave enough to answer a question or volunteer but it gets tiring when you feel like the nagging considerably outweighs the encouraging.
I haven't lost faith in my ability to be a good teacher as I still teach seven classes of Junior 1(11 year olds), five classes of Senior 1(16 year olds) and one class of Senior 2 (17 year olds,) which are for the most part gratifying, fun, and effective. In other classes I have been able to teach grammar, songs, games, conduct interviews, write class poems, put on skits, play jokes all while using English and helping the students to build confidence in their speaking skills. I have my rough days with some of these classes too but at the end of the day I don't feel like the Wicked Witch of the West coming to enact punishments, shush until i'm blue in face and be on the other end of a chaotic 80 vs. 1 tug of war.
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