Mr. John! Mr. John! TOILET! Mr. Jooohnn! TOILET!
His hands firmly grasping his crotch, he shuffles toward the door with a sheepish, embarrassed, hurried and pleading look. He needs to the use the restroom right now.
::sigh:: I’m mid-sentence.
“Yes, you may use the restroom.”
He releases his grip on himself and rushes to the door, his wood-soled shoes sliding the last three feet or so against the polished-stone tile. The door swings open and before he closes it I hear a whisper from the ranks in my class. My eyes dart from the source to the doorway.
The gesture is universal, and communicates only one action…
…I’m gonna go have a smoke… he gestures to his friend, bringing the familiar V-sign up to his mouth.
“Get back in your seat! What are you thinking? I can see you…!”
My head hangs… Another sigh.
I exhale, look up and point to him, and then I point to his seat. His gesture was clear, and so is mine.
Get your ass back in your seat, communicates my gesture.
These are my students. And this gentleman, the crotch-grabber, is deep in his thirties. It’s the thirteenth week of school and I don’t know what his name is. He’s come to class a handful of times.
With another sheepish grin, he sulks back to his seat, unable to make eye-contact with me.
We’re in my English III class, and the day’s lesson is the second conditional clause, using the base + modal form.
Ninety percent of my students can not ask to use the restroom in English. One hundred percent have no clue what I’m talking about.
That’s pretty much how it goes for me everyday. Some lessons sink in, but the gaps are too wide to do any good. They’re supposed to be learning the nuances of conversational English grammar, advanced for many secondary-school-aged native English speakers and my students don’t have the grammar capacity to learn through context by reading around the problem. They’ve forgotten basic sentence structure but I’m trying to teach them when to use an infinitive and when to use a gerund, and when either is acceptable.
My boss, Joe, tells me it may be the first time in their academic careers they were actually presented a challenge from a course, and they’re unable to cope with what that means. The deeply-ingrained culture of group-harmony here has produced the ultimate no-student-left-behind phenomenon. Homework? Four whole pages of multiple choice based on reading a 100-hundred-word article? And I only have one week to do it? Come on! You’re killing us!
Exasperation.
I’m a new teacher, and I haven’t found out the best way to deliver a lesson suited to their learning habits. Our language barrier is miles tall and meters thick. They signed up (they were given clearance to sign up) for a class they were wholly unprepared for, but I slog on. There are only a few more weeks left, and then I’ll regroup and re-arm. Maybe this time I’ll get a say in what books are taught. Student advisers? Course prerequisites? I’m just as clueless to their educational system as they are to the course material, and my understanding of the system is vital for lesson planning and delivery…
I’m learning on the job, and at least I get to laugh, joke and have fun with my students in between these futile gestures of actual pedagogy.
1 Comment
September 5, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Even if you have middle school students and you know the language they do, teaching, and reaching students is not easy. Humor helps. Also try to instill some confidence. Maybe one small step each day. It is a great unknown out there