I have four weeks left here. Four years down the toilet, that’s how I feel. It’s not how it is, of course. My kids speak Chinese well now. I may get married soon, if the bureaucracy allows it. But today is not about this. Let me tell you about today. But let me first tell you about Mike.
Madman Mike
You may know Mike in person. He has some followers on Twitter, he still lives in Taiwan, he sure is well-educated, I heard he will get married soon, too, or will have a baby. Something like that.
I arrived at the cram school over two years ago on his last day. The boss didn’t tell him I was coming, and the secretary was told to bring me upstairs to his classroom. When she opened the door to let me into his classroom to have a look how he taught, he looked surprised and angry and yelled “no way” and kicked us out of his classroom.
Actually, I had no idea that was the plan for that day, he didn’t know either. She brought me back to the first floor. After a while, he came down, I heard him scream to some kids and when he was also in the first floor, he turned back to the stairs, looked up and yelled like a crazy person to some kid upstairs.
I wondered what was going on and why was that necessary. It seemed like a crazy man, totally out of his mind, to me. He turned to me and asked me if I was the new teacher and where I come from. Maybe he was offended by the fact that he would be replaced by a non mother-tongue speaker, I don’t know. He gave me a big stuffed dice and said “good luck” and left.
But what I’ve been remembering these years is that last yelling into the stairs: the madman’s scream. He was working there for many years. Why did he leave so angry? No goodbye party, no farewell cake, no nothing. So many years and leaving like that. The cram school is a small three-floor house. One teacher in the first floor, one teacher in the second floor and two teachers in the third floor, one of them the only foreigner. Should be like a family.
Madman Me
During my last class today, I had to expel one of the kids from the class. He comes back after a couple of minutes without knocking first and while walking towards his desk says “I want to drink” and takes his water bottle. I take the bottle from his hands and say, “wait outside”. He already had removed the cap of and I slightly touched the bottle nozzle. He dramatically, because he really enjoys acting, accuses me of doing that and I open my hand, touch it again and ask him to leave. He leaves and I keep teaching. This kid is making trouble since the first day.
I will spare you the details.
After five minutes, my boss opens the door of the classroom and asks me to come out to talk. She asks me if I’ve really touched the bottle nozzle. We talked for one or two minutes. She says his mother will not accept teachers being strict to his son, she says many things. I listen and explain what happened. It seemed he invented the reason he was expelled. It doesn’t matter.
I am standing there with two weeks left. I already told her I will leave. I even try to help her find a new teacher. But she decides to come to the third floor, believes the lies of the kid and teaches me how to do things in Taiwan… She knows I am leaving in one month. She repeats one sentence two or three times during the conversation, “now I will have to clean the water bottle for him”.
I can’t take it anymore. I go back into my classroom, slamming the door against the wall, I think I grabbed something, or maybe wanted to leave something on the table before going downstairs. I go back to her, she seems concerned now because my expression has changed, I slammed the door too. First time. “Give me the bottle” I say. She doesn’t. “Give me the bottle” I repeat. She says, you are being emotional. I start walking down the stairs and say, “I will talk with him directly”. She follows me. She says nothing. I arrive to the first floor and think I would be able to tell you what happened if I try really hard. But it doesn’t matter.
I lost. They broke me. I am the madman now.
I was screaming to the kid like Madman Mike. Well, actually I think compared to me, Madman Mike would appear to be an English gentleman.
It’s the second time this happens. The first one because the kids, the same class. But this time it has been the boss. Of course I know it’s because of me. I am sure Mother Teresa or Gandhi would have control themselves, even if all the things that happened to me in this cram school over the past years would have happened to them. Kids saying “fuck you” every minute, kids spitting to me, kids calling me “bald man”, “impostor” (because I am not a native English speaker) and many other things. Maybe they would have smiled and replied nicely. But I am no Gandhi. It’s my fault, I should have more self-control. On the other hand, I’ve been over two years of smiling to monkeys and teaching them without screaming, with very few exceptions. Compared to Taiwanese teachers, I can be considered mute. Today it has been the boss.
It’s difficult to describe what happens in a classroom. Although sometimes it’s hard, if the boss helps you the problems become smaller, much smaller. But if the boss doesn’t help you, it’s just impossible to fight on all fronts and keep the smile.
After screaming like a madman, I think even my boss was scared. Whatever she said, I just kept screaming. Something I think it happens to me like it happens to Hulk. Beyond some point, there is no control. Although I stopped myself in time, let’s say. I just left them there and went back to the third floor, where I’ve been shacking for 10 minutes until finally calming down almost completely.
I don’t remember being introduced to the other teachers. Since I started working there the second floor’s teacher has changed several times, the actual one is the sixth. I think my boss fired the first and second ones; the third one left because of depression, the fourth one because she preferred to go back to her previous job. The fifth one was fired too, just after one month. All these in less than three years. I remember my boss screaming to all those teachers like a madwoman.
I’ve done well, after all, I think.
Madman You
As you may remember, I am a loser, just like you. You are living in Taiwan. Wake up, man, stop dreaming. It’s OK, you will leave too, I have faith in you, don’t worry too much. This too shall pass.
If you are thinking about teaching kids and you have another option. Take that other option.
Many times I say to my friends if I could choose, same salary, between my actual job, teaching kids in a cram school, or crush stone in a mine for twice the time every day. I would choose the mine.
Teaching adults is easy, I’ve done it for some years. Teaching kids in a well organized cram school, it’s OK. I’ve done it before for a couple of years too. Even teaching teenagers in a public school, also no problem. But teaching kids with a boss who is only worried and scared about what the parents will say… Better crush stone in a mine, my friend, just crush stone.
Go somewhere in the Mediterranean. Taiwan is not worth it.
Tomorrow
I think this story needed a second beer to be told in the colorful way it deserves, but I’ve only got one tonight.
I am thinking about calling my boss tomorrow and requesting my full monthly salary immediately, and resigning.
But maybe after sleeping on it, I will just do my last two weeks as if nothing had happened today or during these past two years.