A deep problem I have with teaching

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

[quote=“Whole Lotta Lotta”]
One thing that keeps me in Taiwan is that I actually do like teaching when it is going well. Their is nothing more rewarding than seeing children learn things when you taught them. I think there are some students who are better for having had me and I am better for having met them.[/quote]

Whole Lotta Lotta: Having great students truly makes teaching a joy. Then again, I wonder if those great students don’t deserve better than me. For me, the despair in teaching comes from the great mass of apathetic kids in the middle who seem to be just trying to get through each day. If I think back to my own school days, I can still remember the names of the outliers at either end of the spectrum, both in terms of behaviour and results. Yet there’s a huge mass of faceless, nameless guys I went to school with. I have great difficulty understanding and empathising with the faceless, nameless middle. Even when I’m opposed to them, I can appreciate the variously good, bad and ugly because they seem to have an energy and a direction, and they offer some sort of response. I don’t know to what extent other teachers struggle with this, but I think it’s a deep problem I have with teaching driven by my world view in which I have real contempt for mediocrity and just cannot fathom those who cannot help but blend into the crowd. I think this ultimately makes me unsuitable for mainstream teaching.

For me, I am really just biding my time to a certain extent. I have a fairly reasonable net worth, at least for my own living costs and needs. I’m largely trying to live well within my means, save additional money (and invest it) and then teach for the next ten to fifteen years and then get out, or at least be able to pick what I do much more carefully. Living outside of the developed world, this is possible. Teaching certainly isn’t something I plan to make a career out of. I would consider it a waste of my life if I spent it labouring over the banal with the mediocre and the apathetic. That’s not to say that I don’t try to do what I do well – I consider it a moral imperative to do so – but just that I really don’t think it makes that much of a difference. Maybe far duller people than me would even make better teachers simply because they could relate to the students more.

2

Guy, maybe the great students don’t really need you? Maybe the worst ones will respond better to someone else?

But what about the masses in the middle? Don’t you ever brighten up their otherwise meaningless lives? Has not one of those kids ever come to life and changed something about him/herself as a result of something you taught them? Did nobody ever get fired up about new possibilities or new perceptions in your class? Has not one individual ever discovered a hidden talent, or shared one that was not being nurtured?

You seem like a pretty switched-on guy, following a sound moral compass. If you keep on doing what you’re doing, you will occasionally notice that you really are making a difference. And being appreciated for it.

I teach high school and adults. I have ‘friends’ on facebook that I have no recollection of ever teaching, but they have tracked me down and shared their lives with me because I was their teacher five years ago, when they were 13, and they still remember me. I occasionally get stopped on the street by strangers calling my name and struggling to have a conversation because I made a difference to their life years ago. I met a girl a while ago who never made it to university, and now works in a shoe-shop. But she can fucking-well serve foreign customers. It’s a struggle, but she’s not afraid, and if I’ve achieved nothing in my life I do at least have the knowledge that someone is grateful to me for giving her that courage.

Wait a few years, my friend. You might feel differently about the mediocre masses.

I went into a phone store to pay my bill a few days ago, and the guy behid the counter said “MayIhepyou? … Paymybill? … Yourtelephonenumber? … Waitaminute.” And we went through the transaction with me smiling quietly to myself at the thought that here was yet another mediocre guy in a crappy job doing his level best in difficult circumstances. I had a laugh with him about how easy it is to speak English, and he grinned triumphantly at his colleagues who had been sniggering at his pain. A happy guy. Someone somewhere in his past gave him the ability to succeed in his inconsequential endeavours, and it matters to him. You are making a difference, even if you don’t see it now. Keep doing what you’re doing, and remember that one day those kids will be grateful to you.

3

I used to teach adults more than anything else and I was a very popular teacher. At first it was mostly because I was a pretty blond girl, I think, but then the students would really get into my classes, bring their friends until the class had to be split, and really enjoy themselves.

This was because I always did my level best to plan lessons that were interesting, fun, engaging, and challenging but not threatening. Going to English class was more of a social event, a fun thing to do. My students learned. They sure did. But they had a great time and they really appriciated a class where that was possible.

They were all mediocre students for the most part. But they were also, lonley, overworked, and under a lot of family stress. I gave them a chance to let off some steam, or talk some things out, or forget for a while, while doing something useful with their time and good for their future.

I felt great about that.

I HATE playing at teaching. I can’t stand an atmosphere that pressures students–especially kids–in order to give the appearance of seriousness or studiousness. I hate a job that’s a lot of BS paperwork and doesn’t allow for creativity or flexibility. I hate an environment where students are viewed as customers and not children/people. I hate to be viewed as a product.

Teaching should not feel like whoring.

4

I wrote that last post on the back of having corrected some work sheets about telling the time, which I’d spent weeks going over with some kids. One set of worksheets had blank clock faces with words written below (e.g. Ten past three.) and the other set had clock faces with hands and the kids had to write the time below. Some kids didn’t even bother to do it the easy way and cross-reference the two sheets so they could get the format the same. Some gave me complete gobbledy gook or clocks with two big hands. That kind of thing just gives me the shits. I don’t have an issue with a kid getting it wrong, it’s just when they don’t even give a shit enough to put any attention to detail into their work. It’s kids who just want to sleep walk through a class, who won’t exercise any initiative, who expect me to spoon feed them the answers. People who don’t, and won’t, reflect on their circumstances at all. Some people get that it’s not enough to simply turn up to life. I do think I brighten up some of these kids’ lives, but I also think that’s overstated in many cases. I think many of them think I run on the spot for comic effect. They don’t stop to think, “Hang on a second, he’s running on the spot…what’s that word he’s saying? Run. Wait…run equals pao bu!” They just live in anticipation of the weird, funny shit their foreign teacher is going to do this week, as though they have their very own personal Adam Sandler on site. They’re like those guys in Brave New World who live for their soma, or any other distraction to dull the pain and relieve the tedium, as though life consists of tedium or excitement, but mostly just bumbling along, that there’s nothing sublime and nothing pathetic (in the sense of invoking pathos).

Or the other one I love is when I know a kid’s name, but he can’t say his own name, so I say, “Joe”. So he nods. So I repeat his name and make a gesture towards him and for him to say it. So he nods. So I repeat it again, emphasising him saying it. So he nods. So then some other kid blurts it out in Chinese that I want him to say Joe, so he says Joe.

I have a student who has learning difficulties. They’re really severe actually. He’s fifteen, but he draws like a five year old. Every day though, this kid comes to me and tries to talk to me. Half the time, he’s wrong, even with really basic stuff, but he gives it a go. Some of the smarter kids think it’s hilarious that he and I do all of this TPR and they won’t do it themselves. Yet they don’t stop to think, “Hey, maybe this stuff works! Maybe writing multiple choice exams doesn’t work!” Have a laugh at the idiots pretending they’re dogs and cats, but you don’t have learning difficulties and you’ve been learning English for six years and you still can’t tell me which day it will be tomorrow or what your hobbies are, you bunch of knuckleheads. These are the same kids who can learn all the stuff for the tests reasonably well but grow up to be adults who get eaten alive by dodgy credit card companies charging them 24% interest, not because they’re dumb and can’t work out what 24% of 5,000NT is, but because they’re dumb arses and can’t work out life.

5

[quote=“Some bloody longhair”]I teach high school and adults. I have ‘friends’ on facebook that I have no recollection of ever teaching, but they have tracked me down and shared their lives with me because I was their teacher five years ago, when they were 13, and they still remember me. I occasionally get stopped on the street by strangers calling my name and struggling to have a conversation because I made a difference to their life years ago. I met a girl a while ago who never made it to university, and now works in a shoe-shop. But she can fucking-well serve foreign customers. It’s a struggle, but she’s not afraid, and if I’ve achieved nothing in my life I do at least have the knowledge that someone is grateful to me for giving her that courage.

Wait a few years, my friend. You might feel differently about the mediocre masses.

I went into a phone store to pay my bill a few days ago, and the guy behid the counter said “MayIhepyou? … Paymybill? … Yourtelephonenumber? … Waitaminute.” And we went through the transaction with me smiling quietly to myself at the thought that here was yet another mediocre guy in a crappy job doing his level best in difficult circumstances. I had a laugh with him about how easy it is to speak English, and he grinned triumphantly at his colleagues who had been sniggering at his pain. A happy guy. Someone somewhere in his past gave him the ability to succeed in his inconsequential endeavours, and it matters to him. You are making a difference, even if you don’t see it now. Keep doing what you’re doing, and remember that one day those kids will be grateful to you.[/quote]
Can complete knobs even HAVE their posts nominated for classic status?

6

No offense intended, but why in the world would you expect any teenager to get excited about a worksheet filling in words under clock faces?

7

I used to be one of those kids. Seriously, just leave them the fuck alone, they have enough shit to deal with in and outside of the classroom. They don’t ‘choose’ to come to your class. Give them a break.

Reading your posts, you sound like quite a reasonable guy. I’m sure many of them appreciate you simply for not being an asshole. Trust me.

8

ironlady: Because some of them seem to have trouble remembering how to say it or wondering what I’m doing if I have pictures on the board and do actions and say it, so I’m trying to cater to those who might do better if they also see the words, and others if they draw the clock hands themselves, and so on.

Ideally, some of these kids would get excited about something, and I have classes that give responses, and they’re fantastic. I have other classes where I’ve tried a whole lot of things – I’ve done actions, they’ve done actions, I’ve told stories, they’ve told stories, we’ve read other people’s stories, I’ve made things, they’ve made things, I’ve drawn pictures, they’ve drawn pictures, I’ve written something, they’ve written something, we’ve listened to recordings, we’ve played games – and they still don’t give a shit. The simple fact of the matter is that some of these kids are zombies and will grow up to be adult zombies and raise little zombies of their own. Some of them can’t sweep a pile of leaves without a teacher standing next to them walking them through the process. They will grow up to be adult zombies who won’t be able to replace a packet of chips on a shelf in 7-eleven unless their boss explicitly tells them to replace it, but they can probably answer a multiple choice cloze test and get above 90% (only after their teachers have drilled the answers into them though).

9

Following on from Ironlady’s point about why you think students could get excited about a stupid worksheet, maybe you could try going the other direction. If the students are doing the book Backpack 2, find an activity from Backpack 4. Show them the book. Tell them you understand that clock worksheets are boring and so today you want to give them a challenge. “Class. Today we are going to jump up two levels. Give it a try!”

10

KathVic: We don’t use a textbook. I make materials for them. If I ask them what they want to learn, most students simply can’t answer the question, even if I give them a list of options (even a narrow list). So, I’m trying to teach them things that might actually be useful to them, such as answering basic questions about themselves, telling the time, etc. If these kids could reasonably tell me what they would like to learn instead, I’d be all ears. I have a couple of classes that are like that, and so it works well for all involved. The problem with the kids I’m talking about is that they give enough of a shit to let me know that there’s a problem (even if they’re not conscious of what they’re doing), but they don’t give enough of a shit to help me find a solution. They don’t/won’t take any responsibility for their part in the learning process.

Anyway, antarcticbeech I wanted to add before (but didn’t have time) that I have a problem with compulsory education. I don’t think it is necessarily a good thing, though the counter argument would be that kids often don’t know what is good for them (and if given the chance, would spend all day playing computer games instead of going to school, which might leave them ill-prepared for adult life) and it would be negligent of adults to not give them direction. I’m still undecided on this issue. More pressing than that though is that even if I were okay with just letting certain kids sit up the back and sleep or do something else, so long as they weren’t disruptive, my boss, and possibly their parents also, would be on my back about it. Public education has a whole lot of flaws, but to some extent, I have to work within the system.

11

Honestly, GIT, you sound like you’re probably just not a good teacher. At least not in this environment. You can’t keep them engaged and that’s the most important thing while teaching here (anywhere?). Whether it’s a problem with your classroom management style, your attitude, your materials, or just a lack of charisma, you just don’t have “it”.

I know it sounds extremely arrogant, but I simply don’t experience the same problems that you do - both internally and externally.

12

Eros: Yet there are large numbers of students with whom I don’t have these issues. Maybe it is a personality thing, but as I said, where’s their part in that? Maybe their personality is the problem. If a person walks into a restaurant and can’t tell the waiter what he wants, but doesn’t want anything the waiter suggests or anything that’s on the menu, then whose fault is that?

13

[quote=“Eros”]Honestly, GIT, you sound like you’re probably just not a good teacher. At least not in this environment. You can’t keep them engaged and that’s the most important thing while teaching here (anywhere?). Whether it’s a problem with your classroom management style, your attitude, your materials, or just a lack of charisma, you just don’t have “it”.

I know it sounds extremely arrogant, but I simply don’t experience the same problems that you do - both internally and externally.[/quote]
What I don’t like about this is that people take responsibility off of the students for their own feelings about the teacher. I wrote about that on another thread (To my dear teacher). The students do have to take some responsibility for whether they like you or not. If they are adults, they have control over their own feelings about you. I have had classes that were very easy to get to love me. I have had others I have bent over backwards for, only to have them not care. If you put this all on the teacher, there is no motivation for the student to take responsibility for their own education. I know many junior high students already have too much pressure on them. Many of them are also too spoiled.

14

Well, IMO it has more to do with teaching for mastery, and how that can be done.

In Taiwan, most of the kids are passed along without having mastered the material. That might be to keep the numbers up, because the whole class is going to advance or else, or just through needing to please the parents. But it happens almost everywhere.

Second, no sane individual in the world who is not incredibly motivated to learn a language (and very few of the kids you describe would fall into this category) would be able to concentrate on the “time-telling lesson”. I went to an expensive [name of language here] immersion two years ago and sat through the time-telling lesson, and found myself thinking, “I really don’t need all this detail. I could get along perfectly well with just the hours and maybe half-past.” And I’m a paying adult, sitting there by choice!

This is one of the great flaws of traditional teaching – the “topical lesson”. It’s harder to keep track of things when it’s all thrown at you at once, without a shred of context or meaning (and simply adding a single sentence “Bob eats breakfast at 8:00” under the clock face isn’t really very strongly compelling in the area of context).

When I train teachers to teach time-telling, over the course of a course, we don’t have “the time-telling lesson”. Instead, one day the phrase “eight o’clock” is part of the day’s content; the next day, maybe it’s “six o’clock”, then the next week we add “three-thirty”, and so on. By the end of the course, they know all the time expressions – and a lot of other “sets” of things that have been introduced this way, in meaningful contexts (in the course of talking and reading about other things that are interesting and compelling) – quite securely.

The problem, of course, is that this does not fit the “I’ve taught it, damn it, you go memorize it and there’s a quiz tomorrow” mentality of teaching, which is the one on which most Taiwanese buxibans are founded. But in the end, you have to ask yourself: am I teaching “English 1” or am I teaching “English Unit Five Where We Learn to Tell Time”?

15

Problem I have with English teachers is that a lot of them can’t really teach people how to write… Most just fall back to grammar text books. Having good grammar does not make you a good writer. This is aimed more at high school and language courses in general not at the buxiban industry.

When people learn a foreign language they have to truly be interested in it in order to succeed. Pushing a kid to learn a language where the rarely anyone they know speak it as a primary language doesn’t help much at all. One beef I had when I learned Spanish in high school was that the teacher expected us to pronounce words fluently or know 30 new words in a span of two weeks. Problem was none of us would ever have to use Spanish in our lives. It’s hard to push people to learn a language when you learn it out of a requirement either for credit or your parents forcing you to. If you have an interest that’s a complete different story. Most teachers fall onto the problem of teaching too fast and kids just cram tests and don’t remember things taught from the last chapter.

16

I hate this. eom

17

ironlady: Do you believe that all students in a class, under the right circumstances (within the teacher’s control) would want to learn? Do you think it can be a flawed concept putting a bunch of kids in a class when they just want to sleep or chat with their friends because they know that whatever the teacher does, it doesn’t actually count towards any sort of grade? Likewise, what onus do you think there is on the learner to actually care or try? What should the waiter do in my analogy above?

I’m curious as to how other people deal with these issues. I’m sure there’s a whole lot that I’m doing wrong and could improve upon, but there have been many times when I’ve thought to myself, upon observing someone else’s class (or having them next door to mine), “Gee, I’m glad I don’t have to teach that lot!”

18

[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”][quote=“Whole Lotta Lotta”]
One thing that keeps me in Taiwan is that I actually do like teaching when it is going well. Their is nothing more rewarding than seeing children learn things when you taught them. I think there are some students who are better for having had me and I am better for having met them.[/quote]

Whole Lotta Lotta: Having great students truly makes teaching a joy. Then again, I wonder if those great students don’t deserve better than me. For me, the despair in teaching comes from the great mass of apathetic kids in the middle who seem to be just trying to get through each day. If I think back to my own school days, I can still remember the names of the outliers at either end of the spectrum, both in terms of behaviour and results. Yet there’s a huge mass of faceless, nameless guys I went to school with. I have great difficulty understanding and empathising with the faceless, nameless middle. Even when I’m opposed to them, I can appreciate the variously good, bad and ugly because they seem to have an energy and a direction, and they offer some sort of response. I don’t know to what extent other teachers struggle with this, but I think it’s a deep problem I have with teaching driven by my world view in which I have real contempt for mediocrity and just cannot fathom those who cannot help but blend into the crowd. I think this ultimately makes me unsuitable for mainstream teaching.

For me, I am really just biding my time to a certain extent. I have a fairly reasonable net worth, at least for my own living costs and needs. I’m largely trying to live well within my means, save additional money (and invest it) and then teach for the next ten to fifteen years and then get out, or at least be able to pick what I do much more carefully. Living outside of the developed world, this is possible. Teaching certainly isn’t something I plan to make a career out of. I would consider it a waste of my life if I spent it labouring over the banal with the mediocre and the apathetic. That’s not to say that I don’t try to do what I do well – I consider it a moral imperative to do so – but just that I really don’t think it makes that much of a difference. Maybe far duller people than me would even make better teachers simply because they could relate to the students more.[/quote]

GuyInTaiwan, while I can identify with your feelings, I doubt that there are any careers in which you will not have to deal with apathetic people. Do you think doctors enjoy telling their apathetic patients to stop over eating and or smoking?

19

[quote=“steelersman”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”][quote=“Whole Lotta Lotta”]
One thing that keeps me in Taiwan is that I actually do like teaching when it is going well. Their is nothing more rewarding than seeing children learn things when you taught them. I think there are some students who are better for having had me and I am better for having met them.[/quote]

Whole Lotta Lotta: Having great students truly makes teaching a joy. Then again, I wonder if those great students don’t deserve better than me. For me, the despair in teaching comes from the great mass of apathetic kids in the middle who seem to be just trying to get through each day. If I think back to my own school days, I can still remember the names of the outliers at either end of the spectrum, both in terms of behaviour and results. Yet there’s a huge mass of faceless, nameless guys I went to school with. I have great difficulty understanding and empathising with the faceless, nameless middle. Even when I’m opposed to them, I can appreciate the variously good, bad and ugly because they seem to have an energy and a direction, and they offer some sort of response. I don’t know to what extent other teachers struggle with this, but I think it’s a deep problem I have with teaching driven by my world view in which I have real contempt for mediocrity and just cannot fathom those who cannot help but blend into the crowd. I think this ultimately makes me unsuitable for mainstream teaching.

For me, I am really just biding my time to a certain extent. I have a fairly reasonable net worth, at least for my own living costs and needs. I’m largely trying to live well within my means, save additional money (and invest it) and then teach for the next ten to fifteen years and then get out, or at least be able to pick what I do much more carefully. Living outside of the developed world, this is possible. Teaching certainly isn’t something I plan to make a career out of. I would consider it a waste of my life if I spent it labouring over the banal with the mediocre and the apathetic. That’s not to say that I don’t try to do what I do well – I consider it a moral imperative to do so – but just that I really don’t think it makes that much of a difference. Maybe far duller people than me would even make better teachers simply because they could relate to the students more.[/quote]

GuyInTaiwan, while I can identify with your feelings, I doubt that there are any careers in which you will not have to deal with apathetic people. Do you think doctors who enjoy telling their apathetic patients to stop over eating and or smoking?[/quote]
Steelersman. True. But doctors are not blamed when their patients are apathetic overeat and die. Teachers should not bear all the blame when the students are apathetic as well.

20

l
That may work for students with enough grasp of the language to discuss something meaningful but I don’t know how possible it is to make language meaningful for someone who just started learning any language.

Furthermore in a class of different students, what the teacher may think is a meaningful lesson and even some students may agree, is often boring for other students.