The Best Clark Kent That I Can Be

I am frequently asked, “So, how is teaching?”
I usually respond with, “Err…”

It’s not that I am uncertain about what I am doing and how I feel about it. It’s just that I would hesitate to call it “teaching.”

I teach 9 classes of 40-60 students, who I see for 90 minutes once a week. That comes out to 360 – 540 students, once a week. On top of that, I am teaching ‘conversation.’ Conversation is an interesting subject, and I think is actually closer to an art class than, say, history or math. I’m not speaking in any sort of qualitative measure, but in methodology, but in purpose. I am not so much imparting knowledge as I am developing (1) a skill. Unlike art, though, I have the only frame for what sounds right, and therefore must be personally involved in everything that happens in class. Doing the rough math, in 90 minutes I could hear each person speak for between a minute and a half and two minutes and fifteen seconds. Awesome.

There are days when the lesson plans go well, the students are engaged, they are asking good questions, and I get to hear some interesting opinions. Even on those days, though, am I actually teaching anything? Is anyone getting more conversant? How would I even know?

All of the real teachers out there will probably tell me how foolhardy this is, but I’ve come to realize that I teach out of pure force of personality. I am more a conductor than a professor, more a performer than educator. I project so much that I can hear my over-enunciated syllables bounce back at me; I fill the room with my voice. I am learning to dig deep trenches of silence to foul the steps of a wandering mind, then my words erupt again: first clipped and precise and then lower and drawn out, the percussion to arrest their attention and the flow to bring them in. I am becoming a good orator, I will give myself that (2). But are they learning?

I see their eyes locked on me as I present the material, and then watch them lower when I ask them to respond. I call names and they respond, their words stiff like a marionette, a puppet master still struggling with the strings. Rome was not built in a day, but was it built on two sentences a week (2)? Today I paired them up and gave parameters for a short conversation, asking that there be no Chinese spoken for 3 minutes.

They lasted 45 seconds. I timed it.

I think we are all in denial. I hear the teachers talk about the interesting topics brought up by this or that student, but know that they are just the over embellished pearl stolen from a gross, hairy hog’s snout of a day. I do it myself. I make dragons out of windmills, for fear that the truth might reveal that my fight against poor conversational skills is insignificant, empty, and foolish.

In the end, the students who want to learn will make the effort to speak in class and those who don’t will hide at the corners and bow their heads in silent shame when they are called on. I can’t make them try, and forced compliance only makes them look stupid and me feel like a jerk. Maybe I’m copping out. It doesn’t feel good to accept someone else’s lethargy, but it feels right. Most of the time. I guess that if I can’t be Superman, I might as well become the best Clark Kent that I can (4).

(1) Trying to develop… sigh.
(2) We discussed William Blake’s The Poison Tree, and at the end of class I read it as I thought it should be read. I got a standing ovation, a nice little ego stroke for the end of the day.
(3) That is, if you are one of the 10% of the students who get called on…
(4) Caveat time. I can’t accept this. Maybe I’m still too young and idealistic. There is truth in it, and now that I look at it again, it’s kindof a DC comics version of the Serenity Prayer (5). But I cannot accept that we don’t have within us the capacity to become more than mortal. Some small seed that may remain dormant for a lifetime, but also that may, under the right conditions, erupt with blinding fury, transforming us and all around us. A grain of sand, dreaming the dreams of stars...
(5) God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

First Day of Teaching

Today was the first day of class, but it held more mysteries than known quantities. How much English would the students know? We were teaching the first period of the day at 8:00, would the rooms even be open? Would the classrooms have the audio / visual components that we were promised? How old would the students be? Would they respond to humor, or did they want something more serious? Were they willing to even try speaking English? My class sizes range between 40 and 60, but how many students would actually show up?

I found out the answer to that last question was 9. Of the five teachers, three of them had full classrooms, I had nine students, and Ash had none. His classroom wasn’t even open. Ash sat down in the teacher’s lounge (1) to bunker down until his 10:30 class, and I set to teaching the students that I had. The lesson plan that I had prepared for fifty-five students went much more quickly with nine. I had hoped to gauge their creativity by having them play a form of “Two Truths and a Lie.” I think the concept was lost on them, and I did not hear a single lie. On top of that, it’s hard to get lost in a crowd of nine, and the students were far too nervous to get any response other than silent, slightly quizzical stares. No voices, no laughter. I was alone with 9 furrowed brows.

At 8:30 there was a commotion in the hall. A river of students seemed to materialize and flow past my door, making it difficult to hear the already soft-spoken students. I stepped outside under the guise of quieting the commotion, but I think what I really wanted was to escape the mind-numbing monotony of my sabotaged lesson plan.

I step outside to see Mr. Wang, my boss, frantically moving through the students. Apparently there was a miscommunication, and Ash’s students finally arrived. I called him, and told him the good(ish) news, but not all of the hundred-or-so students could be his. I asked one student, and it turned out they were mine. I told him where to go, and when I stepped into my classroom for the second time that day, I saw many, many students. Then the bell rang for the mid-class break, and there was nothing I could do but put my head down on the podium. Then the students laughed.

Class was back in. My lesson shot to hell, I had nothing to do but repeat the information that I gave in the first class. This time the class was much more responsive, and it was a lot more fun. It would be futile to try to stick to the original plan, so I improvised with some free-form conversation, and got a few people to talk.

Left with too little time for my plan and too much time to fill by myself, I dismissed the class 10 minutes early. Nobody moved. I repeated myself, and again, barely a ripple. This was the strangest class I had ever been in. I decided I might as well wander around the room and see if I could get some individual conversations going. Apparently they had a class in the same room the next period. Well, at least they weren’t just freakishly studious, because that would be weird.

The next class period (Geology students) went much better. Everyone showed up, and apparently the lesson plan turned out to actually be pretty decent. Two Truths and a Lie was still a bust, though. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess.

(1) An empty room with wooden chairs. Still, better than a chairless room full of people, which China seems to be full of.