On teaching this next week

So, the good news is, this week i actually know that i'm teaching 2 different classes. Previously, I did not know this. Nosir. That made tuesday exciting.

 

Anyways, so, in about 3  hours I roll up my sleeves and teach my two monday classes. These classes are, in fact, easy as pie. They are my culture classes. They want me to teach 19 classes this semester, and the first of two books has twenty chapters. I think the books are mediocre but clearly the book liked them enough to buy a ton of copies so to the books we go! This week is kind of an experiment, so odds are they'll get let out early. Again. Anyways, we'll see how long it takes them to read the chapter aloud to me. It should take an hour, i hope, with my commentary after each paragraph. After that, discussion questions. I'd be a little more involved, but frankly I don't know anything about England or Ireland or that whole unruly lot, and nobody told ME i'd be teaching anything but Oral English, something I use every day.

 

The oral english classes are straightforward. Today we will discuss THIS. Here are 5 questions about This topic. Here is 30 minutes to prepare your answers, conversing with one another in English which will slow you all down muahahaha. ha. So, basically, once a week i need to read a chapter of a mediocre book, and come up with 10 questions. At least, thats what I can tell now. In 2 days I could be writing a blog post about how godawful the last two classes have been because I was so grossly unprepared. But, here's the rub of it. I am grossly unprepared. They knew it when they hired me. I have no teaching experience whatsoever. Well, strike that, I now have 1 week of teaching experience. For all the good it's taught me. So, I guess, this next week will be very interesting.

 

Most of this stems from the revelation that, as the foreigner, i'm largely window dressing to make the school look good. This is a position I'm fine with. My presence means they can brag about having foreign experts teaching english. I have a firm suspicion that my teaching style could involve sock puppets and bear traps, and i wouldn't hear anything about it from the office. I mean, I know its easier to ask forgiveness than permission. That's not exactly news. But the amount of free reign they are giving us is absurd. The only people who have any opinions on how i should teach my class are the other two english teachers. This is, really, babysitting. Again. Fine by me. I didn't come here so I could put english teaching on my resume. I came here so i could put "lived in china for a year and didn't die". The english teaching is handy for a safety net in case i want to get certified to actually teach, which appears to be the most popular thing to do after Pitzer. This is also fine.

 

I guess I'm just confused. This is closer to camp counselling than teaching. I had read online that they would just want me to come to class every day, do a little song and dance, test at the end, pass everyone to varying degrees, everyone goes home happy. it's just the intrim that confuses me. I mean, I never aimed to be confucious. If i inspire the lives of these young men and women, though for every 10 women there is approximately 1 man, it won't have much to do with oral english. What confuses me is, after listening to my coworkers talk about their past experiences and so on and so forth I guess I should really WANT to spend 5 hours a weekend sitting my apartment listening to jimi hendrix and planning out intricate lessons culminating in some grand climax of english understanding. But I don't know how to do it, and the school doesn't seem that interested in it, and there's some concern the students wouldn't get it. I'd rather be figuring out where the electronics market is around here. And eating chinese food. Spending too much goddamn time at the internet cafe until i get my goddamn internet in my goddamn apartment, where the goddamn light in my bathroom has gone out, and it's shaped like a mobius strip and have no idea how to replace it.

 

I don't know. I don't want to feel like a slackass, but I came for China, not for teaching. If the school wants to sideswipe me with culture classes that's fine. But they aren't going to be good ones.

 

Notice how i have to build myself up to do poorly a few hours before i go. Could this be because i suspect that today will result in my students reading at a blistering pace, putting me a full half-hour behind schedule and scrambling for ideas? Or because, in my secret heart of hearts, I wish that I wasn't dealing with a language barrier the size of the grand canyon, meaining I would get an actual warning before stuff like this happened, and the actual expectations of my behavior were laid out.

 

But, at the end of the day, they're TREATING us like we're supposed to spend 20 minutes prepping our glorified baby-sitter class. I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.