A tender message from a father to an over-stressed daughter entering the real world. It made my day.

Listen [1:15].

Remember: Even if you can't sing it, you can still hum it.

[via Metafilter]

Robot vs. Tweaker Methods

At some point this week I decided that it was easier being robot than a foriegn English teacher. I was getting too serious and too frustrated with a group of third graders who wouldn't stop talking while I was teaching. Honestly, I don't rightfully have the skills to teach kids that young. It's too early for all-English classes. It's hard listening to a teacher who speaks half gibberish no matter how much you want to learn. This biomechanical transformation was one of two methods that worked this week.

The first method was acting like tweaky Jim Carry on meth. As soon as the Chinese teacher left I'd say my standard, "Good morning, class!" They'd respond plenty loud, but then I'd stand on a chair and yell it. I'd yell it again trying to scream louder than they could. I had their undivided attention. I'd then hop off, write a category on the board like "food" or "animals." I'd then run around picking students whose hands were shot a mile high. "Cat," they'd say. "CAT!!!!!!!" I'd yell back while giving an enthusiastic and exaggerated high-five crouched down to their little seats. If I was really into it I'd give a psychedelic meow or two.

"Hot Dog!"

"HOT DOG!!!!!!!!"

High-fiving and fake vomiting follows.

The Tweaker Method works perfectly with the little tykes excerpt for two issues that emerge after class. I lost my voice and energy. Out-screaming and out-crazying 9 year olds saps a 25 year old pretty quickly. I'd go into my next class with all the enthusiasm of Ben Stein.

I was going around the room asking them easy questions and I could barely hear the answers under the dull roar of laughter and talking of other students. I couldn't speak over them because my voice was gone. I couldn't dance about acting out "MONKEY!!!" because I didn't have any energy. Getting angry wasn't working. That's just loud and mean gibberish. So I decided to be a robot.

I walked to the other side of the room. I stared at the class. They shut up and stared back. I extended my arm forward making the high-pitch mechanical grind similar to an electric drill. Every move was slow, deliberate, and accompanied by it's own whirring.

They were transfixed. I pointed my finger and asked, "What. Is. Your. Name." in the best monotone android voice I could muster. "My name is...!!!" followed by a squeal of laughter.

When a kid in some distant corner would start talking I'd gun him down with my robo-pencil machine gun and he'd fall over dead on his desk and shut up for a bit. The other kids would giggle and quietly make their own robo-sounds. I was even able to shut the whole class with one swipe of my robo-pencil gun.

It works. I highly recommend the Robot Method to other TEFL teachers with classes to young to know what's going on.

Tags: Treyopia stories China Shenzhen TEFL teaching EFL ESL TESL methods English Chinese children elementry school

Arrgghhh

Shenzhen is the "bastard child" of my company. I was told that when I first got here. The branch has been open for years, but it seems like it just opened yesterday. I like all my supervisors, but I think it's something about the collective whole that's flawed.

Next week every teacher is off for National Day. A few of us were planning to hit up Guilin, the city famous for the gumdrop mountains and beautiful misty lakes. I was gung ho. I've been working 28 classes weekly [part of why my posting has slowed - I'm tired], which is 13 more than the average Chinese teacher does. I've been racking in the overtime covering for the girls who quit. That's, at minimum, 840 students.

On top of just discovering yesterday I'm supposed to do 32 classes this week, I just found out I need to go to Hong Kong on Tuesday. My visa expires on the third and they've waited - as always - until the very last minute to do anything. I wasn't even working my first two weeks in Shenzhen. I pestered them constantly about doing it then so they wouldn't wait to do during National Day week. There's no one person to blame, of curse, it was a collective failure.

This isn't some barometer of my overall feelings of teaching here, but this particular incident really, really makes me angry. I don't mind putting in the hours, I do mind of being deprived my travel plans because of incompetence.



I leave you with a photo from the side of a preschool in the alleyways around my neighborhood. I think it says something about my mindset teaching those little devils tomorrow and now Saturday too.

I had to hide a bit to grab this photo of a man waiting for the evening rush of customers to his kabab stand