In Which Chinese Public Education Is Marked by Tears and Hissing

I won't go so far as to say I got my job under false pretenses, but I certainly can't claim to have any significant teaching experience. With uncharacteristic hubris, though -- the kind that generally ends in the fall of Troy or plagues of boils -- I figured, how hard can it be? I speak English really well!

Those words echoed through my much-humbled heart as I looked down at the boy whose backback I'd just confiscated and saw fat tears rolling down his round cheeks. I fleetingly mused that he's one of my cutest students, with a Charlie Brown head and huge, dark eyes. But so naughty! I told him repeatedly to stop talking, first asking nicely, then with a sharp snap-and-point. Finally, as he jabbered away (in Chinese) and dug around in his backpack, I marched to his desk and took the backpack away, placing it on my desk at the front of the room. Then, after finishing what I'd been writing on the blackboard, I turned and saw his tears.

I made a third grader cry.

And that wasn't the worst of it, though it was bad enough. At the end of class, as the other students ran shrieking and laughing into the hall, I motioned him over to me. Handing him his backpack, I smiled and said, "Next time, no talking when I'm talking. OK?" He nodded, his eyes pleading and hopeful. I saw him after school that day, and he shouted, "Teacher! Teacher! Hello!" Again with the pleading eyes, hoping I wasn't angry anymore.

I wasn't. I was just wrung out. It was so hard to be logical, to tell myself that I was right, that my job is to teach a classroom of 35 students and that this one boy was preventing the other students from (hopefully) learning. Instead, I kept seeing those imploring eyes still wet with tears, and bawled a few of my own.

Teaching, it turns out, is not easy. I'm making the most ridiculous mistakes, the result of inexperience and knuckle-headedness. Games that seem really fun as I envision them in my apartment fail with a miserable splat in the classroom. I plan lessons that end up being too long or too short. I try instituting a system of rewards for good behavior, and the students just don't care. I... speak... really... slowly... so... they... can... understand..., but know it would be so much easier if I could just explain everything in Chinese.

To my credit, I'm slowly, slowly, slowly getting the hang of it. My learning curve is impossibly steep, but I've yet to make the same mistake twice. Why, when there are so many new ones to make?

Aside from the difficulty of the actual teaching, though, there's the issue of crying Charlie Brown head. Working with children is an emotional Tilt-a-Whirl. They don't listen when they should, they forgive me when they shouldn't, they're so delightful and hilarious that I consider kidnapping, they're infurating, they're wonderful, I love them, they drive me crazy, they're a giant, wiggly mess and half the time, they make me feel like my head's on backward.

Later in the week that I made my third grader cry, I sent one of my eighth grade students from the classroom with a hissed "Get out!" He'd shown up late, he was throwing things, he kept talking even when I stood directly over his desk -- deliberately ignoring me -- and then mimicked me once he deigned to "listen."

The frail twig of my patience snapped. I'd already refused entry to a boy who arrived at the classroom door a full five minutes late and with no good excuse, and now I just wanted this other boy the hell out of my sight. Later, I would again go home to cry tears of shame and rue the tactical error of letting students see my vulnerability, but in that moment I demanded he go down to the teachers' office and stand there like the penitent he should be!

Then this class, my most difficult class of eighth graders, rallied. They shut up. They got really into the game. They participated in our conversation activity. Maybe they were scared by my hissing -- and really, it's a wonder snakes didn't sprout from my head -- but I actually think it's just the way of children. They're good and bad. They're unpredictable, and my job is to study the crystal ball of their changeable minds and hearts.

I hate this job. I also love it as much as anything I've ever done.


Here, the third-grade English Club behaves beautifully. And honestly, how can I not love this little face?