It feels like a it's been a long time
since I've written anything, so I figured I might as well put some
words out on the screen, if only for the same of getting words out of
me. I've fallen into an oddly comfortable routine of teaching and
putzing around here. It's weird, for all of the times that I really
disliked teaching during the summer, it's one of the few things I
really enjoy here. There's something rather fun about the
barnstorming way we teach day to day here that makes it new every
time. Every time I walk into a classroom, I'm greeted with thunderous
applause, like a musician taking the stage, and because I represent a
break from the normal monotony of their days, the students are always
lively and attentive. If a lesson works, it really works, and if it
doesn't work, nobody seems to mind. This creates a certain security
that lets me take risks in class, so even if I'm teaching the same
lesson from a book, I can try to put a spin on it without fear of
getting a completely blank response. The flip side to this is that
I'm never really sure what level the kids will be at. Fortunately,
there's always a few kids that are really good that I can lean on to
get through tough times.
I realized the other day that every
class that I teach is bigger than my graduating class in high school,
and that's kind of a mindblowing number for me. It's good in some
ways, as it means there's going to be at least a couple people that
stand out, as I mentioned earlier, but it can also mean that there's
forty kids that have no idea what's going on. This has made me
realize that although I should always do my best to reach out to
everyone, sometimes you have to just teach to those few that actually
understand. It's a balancing act for sure, but it's something that
I'm getting used to. Except in International class.
The International class is its own
special monster. These kids are supposed to be taking the TOEFL exam
in the near future, and so they're taking this class to try to give
themselves a leg up on the test, and for some of them, I have no clue
how they think they have a shot at passing it. I've taught classes
where I'm almost completely sure that they understood nothing that
happened for the whole hour. We'll see how long they last.
International class is also difficult because I don't think that
anyone here understands that we're not real teachers. The school
expects us to build a coherent semester of lessons as a group, and
that's not something we have any real training in, so we're doing our
best to just make it up as we go along, although we'll see how that
goes.
That having been said, I've been
trying to have fun with them as well as teaching. For class this
afternoon, I said to hell with academic pursuits and the TOEFL, and
taught them about Rock and Roll instead. This was met with a mixed,
mostly positive response. Thanks to a very helpful tip from Amy
Stubblefield, I decided that the best way to teach what's admittedly
a very wide topic in an hour was video, and that the videos should be
as iconic as possible. As such, I played them a version of Johnny B.
Goode from the 50's, Elvis singing Blue Suede Shoes, the Beatles
first performance on Ed Sullivan, The Who blowing themselves up on
the Smothers Brothers, Stairway to Heaven from The Song Remains the
Same, Elvis Costello doing Radio, Radio on SNL, Born to Run, The
Clash doing Guns of Brixton at the US Festival, and Radiohead doing
Paranoid Android on Later with Jools Holland. The Beatles, Zeppelin,
and Radiohead went over really well, and may have made fans out of a
few people, and everyone was blown away by two things, the response
to The Beatles, and Robert Plant's package. At least I'm spreading
some culture around here.
My bitching to CSETC apparently has
done something, but this being China, it might have achieved the
opposite of what I wanted it to. Margo said that she's working on
planning more things for us to do, but she also mentioned that one of
the things she's planning are lectures, presumably put on by us for
the students, which sounds like the opposite of a solution to our
concerns. I haven't gotten a response to my second, significantly
angrier letter, hopefully that will come soon.
Nothing much else has changed here,
and I don't really expect it to. I've taken to counting down the days
until I come home, which I'll be doing if I can get out of my
contract with CSETC or not. As far as I can tell, they have little
respect for the contract, so I'm not going to respect either. I
informed them in my first e-mail that I do not want to be placed at a
school next semester, and that I want to be switched to a six month
contract. In standard CSETC fashion, they didn't even address the
request. Fuck 'em, I'll be home in 106 days.
-Cooper
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