Why my job is a sitcom

Bear with me here, because this is going to be a long post. I'm going to run through what I do at work, and why my job is a tragically hilarious joke. I think it's pretty funny/interesting, but y'all may find it boring. If that's the case here are two ways to skip the boring stuff: first, all the dirt is down at the bottom. Second, I'll repost the link to the pictures of the little kids. Look: little kids! Aren't they cute?!

Still reading? Wonderful! So here's what a day looks like for me: wake up at 6:45 and hit the snooze. Wake up again at 6:53 and actually get out of bed. Check my email for about 20 minutes while Martin (my housemate) showers, etc. From about 7:15 to 7:45 I do my morning routine. Around 7:45 I make breakfast (PB and J!), grab my stuff, and eat on my way to work.

The walk to work is about 20 minutes through a commercial/residential area (apartment buildings with shops on the ground floor). Arrive at work no later than 8:30 on a day where I miss my alarm. I prep for class for half an hour (photocopies, going over teaching materials, getting last-minute details worked out, and so on), and then I do half an hour of aerobics with the kids to wake them (and me) up.  After a snack, we launch into the first lesson.

After an hour of phonics and reading there's a fifteen minute break, and then 40 minutes of either math or phonics and grammar, depending on the day. Then they read alone for 20 minutes to practice good reading habits. This is one of my favorite parts of the day, because I get to read my novel so that I can "demonstrate good reading habits." In the month and change I've been teaching I've made it through maybe 120 pages. I typically read up to 100 pages an hour, if it's an engaging book. 

After DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read), the kids have 20 minutes to eat lunch (some of you are probably aware that kids can take FOR FUCKING EVER to eat a tiny portion of food). It can be frustrating, but I've got the oldest group of kids in the school, so at least I don't have to feed any of them by hand. After lunch the kids settle down for a two-hour nap that I envy intensely. I spend the two hours getting some food myself and chatting up the other teachers. I also do all my preparation for the afternoon block of classes, which is usually when we do our artwork. 

After naptime is Music and Movement, which I loathe with a fiery passion. For my class, Music and Movement typically involves 15 minutes spent learning 1 new song each week (The Ants Go Marching; I Knew An Old Woman; You Are My Sunshine; etc.), and then 15 minutes of musical chairs to wake them up a bit. The hardest part for me is finding a new kid-appropriate song each week that is easy enough for them to learn but still interesting enough for me to want to teach them.

After everyone is (in theory) awake and alert, we have an hour of class time (reading, writing, phonics, whatever), followed by another snack, and then another 15 minute break. Our last class of the day is typically an art class where we make some thematic art piece and write a couple of sentences about it just to stay on top of our linguistic learning modality. This month is Halloween, which bores the crap out of me, but at least we make pretty things.

The last 20 minutes of the day are story time, where I read a story to the kids, which can be hell if they are restless, and heaven if they are attentive.

Fun things: Tuesday and Thursday we have Park Time for the first hour-long block of the day. On dry days we take the kids to the nearby DaAn forest park, which is huge, wooded, and beautiful. The kids run around and have unrestricted playtime, and it's a joy to watch, and now I know why my brother Chris was a day camp counselor for so long. I'm considering it myself, now that I see how awesome it is. An unrelated fun thing is putting on my mix CD while the kids do artwork: wordless trip-hop and inoffensive rock like The Beatles and The Red Hot Chili Peppers makes art class infinitely more fun. One final fun thing: getting the kids to memorize new songs a cappella is great: singing without music is really fun.

THE DIRT!

Okay, so the two main "dirt" categories are the teaching curriculum and the management.

The curriculum: simply put, I'm teaching 1st grade materials at American school speeds to a bunch of kindergarteners who work at an ESL level. A lot of the work is not only difficult and challenging, but rather straightforwardly over their heads. I do my best to make it accessible, but some days it's clear that the kids are bored because they simply have no idea what's going on. This can, however, lead to hilarious answers to questions. I asked one kid, "What's the opposite of 'happy'"? He replies, "House!" I have no idea why, but he was really excited to have discovered that house and happy are diametrically opposed.

The management: my manager is the least competent person I have ever encountered. She leaves kids alone in rooms while they are eating. She spoon feeds children mouthfuls of food that simply will not fit inside their mouths. She hires Chinese-speaking TAs who conveniently do not speak English. She fires Chinese-speaking TAs who speak fantastic English because they embarrass her by doing her job better than she does. She is terrified of parents (her job is to liaise with the parents and recruit new students). Finally, she is somewhat dumb. It's become clear that it's not just that she's often flustered by being both in over her head and unable to admit it. Two questions she has asked this week: "How do these crayons work?" (They had lids.) "How many legs does a spider have? Eight? Nine? I just don't know!" (8, for those keeping track at home.) She has trouble with child-locked cabinets.

I realize this is a long paragraph of negativity. I want to stress that when I arrived, I found my boss to be innocuously likable: kind of a non-personality that seemed pleasant enough. After 6 weeks of teaching, I know more about children than she does (no, really, I do!), and she has two kids at home. She endangers the kids, she makes terrible decisions that make my job harder, and she flatters everyone incessantly without ever providing constructive criticism (and I know I need it, because I'm still terribly unfamiliar with my job, even after 6 weeks).

So that's the gist of why my job is tragically hilarious. That, and the fact that I don't have any support from a TA (my TA is really, really competent, but that means she has to fill in for the manager whenever the manager runs into something she can't handle). So I'm alone in a room with 8 kids who have varying grasps of English and who aren't allowed to speak Chinese at all at school. Ah well. At least it's all really quite funny!

And I do love the kids. The decision point for me will come when my manager makes my job so difficult that I can no longer enjoy the time I get with my students. As long as I'm enjoying my classroom time, I'll stay. It does make it worthwhile. That's what I've come to realize.