First Day

I puffed my chest, swallowed my smile, and looked angry. Ten of the cutest kids you could possibly imagine were swarming my podium on a raised wooden platform in the front of the classroom. Other kids were sweeping, cleaning, and wiping off the chalkboard. All of them, at the same time, we're asking my age, my name, where I was from, if I was married. All of them had ear-to-ear smiles. I beckoned them coldly to sit down. I had to play the role of disciplinarian foreign teacher, as mean and cold as any Chinese teacher.

The bell rang. Well, not really a bell. It's actually some hideously cutesy take on classical piano that plays for maybe ten seconds. It's not nearly as creepy as the eye exercise music and instructions. It is exactly them same kind of brain-washing hypnotic repetition via distant PA that you'd expect to hear at some North Korean school.

I wrote my name on the board and had them practice saying it. A million hands went up to ask me questions. I ignored them.

I wrote "rules" on the board underlined and asked if anyone knew what they were. No one knew. I explained and had them write down my four rules and repeat them endlessly. Still no smiles. I drilled them until they had the rules memorized verbatim. I had them practice locations ("I am from Jacksonville. Jacksonville is a city in Florida. Florida is a state in America," and then flipping it to be relevant to them) With much less success I tried to explain my [divorced] family to a few classes. "Your father have two wives?!?"


It worked. The kids were extremely well behaved. I broke down the wall of seriousness mid-way through class and let them ask me questions. I did this seven times my first day. I can still hear the same questions ringing in my ear, over and over, "what's your favorite animal?", "what do you eat?", "do you have a baby?", "do you like China food?", "do you like KFC", ad infinitum.

My only bad class was after lunch where I had a fluent and very talkative student. I assumed all the other kids were on her level and shot over everyone's head. They hated me because I kept turning the jerk up a notch. The fluent girl eventually stopped me mid-sentence to tell me no-one understood a word I said. There were no crowds swarming me at the end of class.

Ahh, lunch. They made me eat out of styrophone containers because they don't have my medical records. Laowai-itus is infectious, perhaps?

I learned that it's a universal trait that kids get rowdier after lunch. Another class played games on me in a cutesy 10-year old kid way. They started by repeating everything I said and then all crowded around me and the chalkboard because 15 of them "couldn't see" my massive writing on the board. It was funnier than it was annoying.

I dig the school. I've had none of the problems the other teachers have had. It's a university-affiliated boarding school where English is taken very seriously and the foreign teachers are respected. I was given an office key, a desk, and keys to another room to take a nap in during the "noon break." I used to get the evil eye from my principal in Jacksonville for dozing during my planning period - this after 7 straight hours of teaching and watching kids while trying to eat lunch at my desk. These guys expected me to string together 4 chairs in a conference room and make a bed. They also gave me a bag of paper, pens, and the kids English books so I could plan around it.

I'll be ready for the weekend though. I have 27 classes this week, as opposed to our normal load of 20 and the Chinese teachers load of 15. We all have to cover for the girls who quit. It's nice though. I've been idle for almost two weeks now. I like how drastically things change day-to-day in China.