Scene 1.
And there’s still more back in my office if you want any
‘Happy April Fish Day, teacher!’ My students are knee deep in plastic snack-sized dried fish wrappers. It’s April 1st. There’s a huge grocery bag three quarters full of unopened dried fish packets under one of the rows of desks. It was a gift from a friend of a friend in Fujian province. A huge bag of dried fish, lightly spiced.
Everyone in the class has a mouth full of dried fish and they look quite pleased about it. During the listening segment of the lesson, one of the rows of hard, bench-like desks tips over with a crash. One of the boys had been so enraptured by the fish that he’d tried to sneak just one more from under the seat behind him. The Little House on the Prairie bench collapsed.
‘It’s delicious, teacher! Here, take!’ I’m given a huge stack of my own dried fish. After all, it’s April Fish day today.
I taught a 90 minute class on Introductory Paragraphs in Research Essays (background, general to specific, previous research and citations, aim and research question). Every jaw in the room chewed the dried fish diligently as they took notes.
Scene 2.
Whilst explaining the concept of Academic Body of Knowledge and how a research essay is meant to refer to it and then to add to it, I drew a picture on the board to illustrate it. I drew a small circle and said, this was the first guy to research Subject X. Then I added little petals, one by one, around the center circle until I had a rather magnificent blooming flower and quite a hearty (though metaphorical) growing body of knowledge.
“Teacher! The body of knowledge looks like a chrysanthemum!’ exclaimed one boy. I was so proud. He could pronounce chrysanthemum. Hell, he knew the word even.
“Teacher!” exclaimed another, “It looks just like Student X’s hair from behind!”
Student X, who possesses a mighty head of hair, nodded and beamed proudly. Not only did he possess awesomely poofy hair but it also looked like a lovely blooming flower and represented the growth of academic knowledge and research.
Scene 3.
Mrs Gu and Mrs Tang are the classroom teachers responsible for the well being of my current and previous crops of students. They make sure the kids are in class on time, hauling them out of bed if necessary. They make sure they do their homework and eat their veggies. They yell at them if need be. They call their parents. They mother them because the kids have no mothers in the dormitories. Kids need mothers. They don’t actually teach and I don’t know if they ever did, but they are still officially Gu laoshi and Tang laoshi and they’re the ones you don’t want to piss off if you want to keep your job. The guy I replaced two years ago hadn’t won their approval.
I have.
Mrs Gu on the left, Mrs Tang on the right. They are dangerous.
And I did it in a way that I’m 99.9% certain would have had me fired immediately anywhere else. It wasn’t planned. It certainly wasn’t planned because I’ve been called up for insubordination and inappropriate behaviour in the past for this sort of thing and nearly fired. It’s a weak spot of mine.
It started small. Last year with Gu laoshi, if kids were late I’d jokingly slide my fingers across my throat to indicate what I wanted her to do with them if they were ever tracked down.
She and Tang speak only Shanghainese and I don’t. The kids say they barely understand them, their local accents are so thick. But they are fluent in dark, dry humour. As am I. The light hearted throat slitting grew into slitting with a subtle mime of heads rolling neatly onto the floor with a thump. Then a quick game of soccer. Many hearty chortles and a quick volleyball serve of the metaphorical head of the tardy kid. The kids also thought it hilarious. A Greek chorus of chortles always emanated from inside the classroom.
Today, Gu laoshi beckoned me out into the hallway while I was taking attendance. She mimicked sharpening long knives, one against the other. Skritch skritch skritch. Eyes glinted. She giggled. A quick finger slice to the neck and the nicely sharpened finger neatly did it’s job. The invisible head rolled down the hall. Thumbs up, mimed Gu.
Finger to throat again, she made rough, awkward sawing motions. Terrible, terrible, she indicated. Nothing worse than a dull finger! That head ain’t going nowhere.
I quickly opened my iPod Chinese dictionary and tapped in a word. Inefficient. That’s very inefficient, I said, in appalling tones. Gu and Tang agreed, vehemently.
I went back inside and taught a 90 minute lesson on European business recruitment practices.
15 Responses
Nice. I want a Mrs Gu & Mrs Tang at my school. My students could use a few death threats to get them out of bed! And it would be fun to finally have someone to play imaginary-head-soccer with. You’re job’s the best. Sigh.
I meant to say “your job.” Sheez.
Nah, you know you meant ‘you’re’. You just forgot to capitalize my title, ‘Job’s The Best’. I am indeed Job’s The Best.
Love the head soccer thing. Maybe you can’t put it on your resume, but personally I’d be more inclined to hire someone with that sort of body language skill.
We’re reading Charlotte’s Web in my 3rd grade class, and the running joke is that instead of eating poor little piggy Wilbur for Christmas dinner, we’ll turn class clown Rodrigo into Rodrigo sausage and Rodrigoburgers and eat him for my birthday. The kids love it.
Don’t tell me that’s not good teaching…
Awesome. Rodrigoburgers are the best thing! And it is good teaching because the kids are totally psyched about it. I know I’d be totally fired if I went back to Canada and taught there. The things I’ve taught over the past decade, in China and Turkey… wow. Not according to the books! The legislation! The lawsuits! Gah!
I wish I could put my communication skills on my resume but I’d probably be institutionalized and heavily medicated. Somehow, I’ve found more freedom to be myself when away from my homeland. It’s a strange and frustrating realization.
Keep this under your hat, but in Mexico you’re actually allowed to…. hug students! Disgusting I know. I haven’t exactly embraced this possibility, but if a kid wants a hug I won’t refuse. Some of the local teachers are much better at this: take child’s head, plant firmly between boobs, squeeze.
Another reason never to teach in the mother country; I don’t want to have to raise my hands in the prescribed “i swear i hate physical contact” way when a kid just wants a hug. This generation of unhugged kids are going to turn out… interestingly.
Oh, I believe you! It was the same in Turkey. I used to emerge from grade 5 classes with the butt of my skirt coated in hand prints from all the round-the-waist hugs. One of the most common phrases heard ’round the halls was, “Teacher, can I kiss you?’. The kids just couldn’t hold in their need to give you a well placed peck on the cheek. Food of all sorts was shared freely- my desk was always stacked high with samples of cookies from each kid, who had diligently shared out their whole packet with their classmates. Even my adult students a few years later were free with the hugs, kisses and food.
Not quite the same in China as I teach university kids, but they are definitely touchy-feely with each other (as were the Turks) in ways that would have a lot of North American uni kids running for the hills fearing that they were being inappropriately hit on (omg gay!)– boys practically in each others’ laps, arms wrapped around each other, girls holding hands and stroking each others’ hair.
I agree with your point about the fear of touch back in the mother countries (for me it would be Canada, and the same problem, coming from the same legislation)- it’s going to be an interesting generation of untouched kids.
… still remember one of my 5th grade classes in Korea. The two closest things the school had to bullies used to sit on each other’s laps and hold hands. Very hard to take bullying seriously when the bullies are giggling and bouncing each other on their knees.
Korea also happened to be excellent in the sharing-food-with-your-teacher sense, although there was a limit to how much plain, boiled sweet potato I could eat on command. And I know the kids meant well when they gave me the milk they had accidentally left in the sun all morning, but still, some gifts were more valued than others.
All this talk about home vs abroad kind of makes it sounds like you are considering a return to the motherland…
Mostly I’m just trying to figure out what to do next. I’ve never actually lived at homes as an adult (just as a university student doing part time jobs in between stints of leaving the country) and I sometimes wonder if I never will. Maybe I’d like it. Maybe I’d still feel as restless and frustrated as I recall from back in my early-mid 20s when I tried to move back a few times. I think I just need to know there is somewhere out there for me that suits me better than China (which is okay but… meh).
Oh, and in Turkey, it was cookies. Lots of cookies. And crackers. And tea.
Do they have those colourful rice cakes that taste like playdough in China? They sure do in Korea. They were another gift of choice in Korea; I me and my expat friends basically recycling every rice cake gift. I’d pass them on to one friend, they’d pass them on to another and so on. It’s not that they were bad, they just weren’t really anything. Somehow blandness can be intolerable.
Totally get what you’re saying; it’s not necessarily about needing to move, it’s about knowing you could at any time. Being tied down instead of just temporarily grounded is a frightening thing, especially if you’re not in love with wherever you are.
There’s always Mexico….
Actually Mexico was my default go-to next destination for a really long time when I was in Turkey and we even ended up there in October 2008 after leaving Turkey for good, thinking we’d travel from DF downwards and look for work. The vibe wasn’t right though, something didn’t click, and we actually ended up in Nicaragua a few months later, applying for jobs online in Oman and China.
Mexico is still on my maybe-list, though it’s a bit too similar to Turkey in many key ways, especially on the job front (kids a bit wild in private schools, language schools poorly paid, etc). Have considered numerous times applying for a job in the Oaxacan university system, though the isolation of most of the schools is daunting. I did 2 years in a small, isolated, traditional, religious Turkish city and although interesting it did my head in.
I do still read real estate listings for Mexico though– my runaway daydream is to buy a cheap little place somewhere and fix it up to be livable and so I can have a home base for my travels and somewhere to store all the stuff I accumulate along the way (I have a weakness for pretty things, am a terrible minimalist). I’d earn my money by writing and doing art (as it is a daydream) and be free to come and go as I pleased…
No prevailing playdough rice cakes here- are they like mochi? Lots of steamed buns stuffed with whatever. And Pocky. And dried fish.And really awful sweet cakes bought from convenience stores with lardy sugary icing. In mid autumn festival season they have moon cakes, which are gifted and regifted and rarely actually eaten because they’re leaden and stuffed with things that are traditionally delicacies (lotus seed and yolk, for example) but not actually very interesting in realty. Not bland, just heavy and often dry.
Hmmm sounds like a different version of the same thing… holiday cakes that no one actually wants. Korea really wasn’t great with desserts, unless you count very short, sweet instant coffee (which I miss).
I have to say if you were in the south of Mexico then you were where most of the culture and none of the money is. Oaxaca or Chiapas would be very nice, but really the jobs are mostly back up around the middle. Don’t know about other schools but where I am the kids are more coddled than bratty. Adults too actually.
What about Nicaragua though? Cheapest dream villas you could ever buy to store all those pretty memories.
You can’t really argue with the click thing, can you? If you don’t click with a place than there’s no future , no matter how great the place is. I think Chile might be like that for me. But I wonder if the click thing might be temporary. Maybe it’s more about a time than a place?
We started out in DF and Puebla, thinking about work there but weren’t inspired enough to stay and work. Probably should have tried harder but the motivation was lacking (i kind of liked having the time off to travel, to be honest). We spent a few weeks in Nicaragua near the end and liked it enough to scope out the haciendas (for if we ever had enough saved) but again, no click. A small click but not enough. I’d prefer Mexico for the food. Nicaraguan food was just meh, which was unfortunate. I did quite like El Salvador though, in the area heading toward Honduras. Still waiting for the big click.