July 2008
The fire alarm switches in the building where I do most of my teaching are always pulled down, despite that no fire alarm has ever gone off.
That’s a lie, an alarm went off in the newer high school building next to mine on the third floor. The bell began to wail and shudder as students were changing classes. At first the boys just stood and looked around for some kind of queue as to what was going on — like smoke. Then as they realized that the teachers were not in control of the situation, pandemonium bloomed. From the 6th floor I watched them scream (in high pitched falsettos that make me cringe) and run in circles, arms waving and gangly legs akimbo mid-sprint like drunken puppets. I asked if the school ever practiced fire drills and Cho just smiled and shook his head. The unsettling sense that nothing and nobody is prepared for the worst, over time, becomes normal. Now I pass a useless fire alarm switch each time on my way to the computer lab and it’s merely a part of the wall, a passing decoration.
I’m resigned to the fact that students will copy from each other (or even the bad students off the bad students which forges a kind of English syntax never seen on this planet nor any other). However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t fight against the gods of inevitability to stop it. I noticed that some of the students do nothing for most of the class, the lined pages of their notebooks blank as the stares they give me when I ask what they are doing. These are the one’s who copy, and they are just waiting for their friends to finish so they can play scribe and replicate, carefully and precisely, every word in front of them without regard for what they are actually doing. They have been allowed to copy off of their friends since their first day of school. Why should this day be any different?
So, with Cho’s blessing, we instituted a rule in the classroom that if students do not start their work in ten minutes after the assignment is explained, they receive a zero. Enforcing this rule at first was difficult because every kid acted as if you had just shot his dog when the red circle appeared on page, ruining his potential work. First there is the reluctance to hand over their book, and then the expression of disbelief – big teary eyes and mouths slightly agape, trying grasp for words to explain their dismay. But only silence comes forth, and then they drop their heads in grief – a sign of acquiecence to the cruelty of this world. Naturally I felt bad, having caused all of this emotion, and at first I was reluctant to carry out my mission with candor. That was until a boy turned in his notebook for a grade with my zero whited out, the raised ouline of my loopy signature still plain to see.
“How stupid do you think I am?” I asked, not because I was angry but because I was genuinely curious.
He simply smiled and that said everything: “You may be mildly retarded, buddy.”
And if one wasn’t enough, the rest of his buddies got the same brilliant idea and suddenly I had four or five notebooks with very interesting white out decorations at the top of the pages: the braille of desperation.
“How dumb do they think we are?” I asked Cho.
“Do you really want to know?” he replied.
Subsequently, I’ve become a zero master. This is my pen — there are many like it but this one is mine. With that in my heart I wait for the allotted ten minutes to elapse – making sure that I’ve announced the zero rule at least two times – and then I go to work. I scope out the usual pockets of students who are chatty and distracted well before the ten minutes is up, and make note of blank pages. With my targets selected I swoop in at the end of ten, quickly and aggressively picking up blank books and delivering my red judgment, leaving in my wake a cadre of dismayed and confused copycats.
Then why do I still find identical books when I am grading?
Perfection is an illusion, somebody probably said…once. Maybe if I teach well enough they will come around, eventually.
Late August
I wrote that at the beginning of July. It was going to be a longer piece but I became bogged down in the details of one section and “put it aside” to work on later. Well later never came and now it is almost September. Other projects have easily distracted me: a pair of short stories and a piece on ordering Thai food in Thai, both of which have their own pool of details in which I am swimming.
Four months in and my perspective has made its many subtle, inevitable changes. I thought I would be more hardened towards my students, bitter at their disregard for my presence and their mounting disrespect. Instead, I find myself smiling more than I frown even when my frustrations build. Some boys continue to ignore our attempts to reach them, and maybe the will forever, but others have improved so much. There is Jettepat, an eighth grader with chubby cheeks that help his eyes to all but dissapear when he smiles his big toothy grins. Jettapat was one of those boys for whom my red pen was taken out week after week.
Then I started to play games.
After school, the boys’ parents can pay for them to stay an extra period for more practice in English a few other subjects. Most of the American teachers this year have volunteered to teach the extra period. We’re paid overtime and the money makes for a life saving extender paycheck to paycheck. Most of the American teachers have primary grades for their extra period. I have eighth grade, and the relationship between the eighth graders and I are, well, frayed.
Horrified at my lack of control over them, for about two months I refused to give my eighth graders anything more than exersizes and worksheets to complete. And for two months I listened to conversations from my friends about how much fun their kids were, and what fantastic games they were planning to play with them.
“We’re going to make paper flowers today, and they’ll have to name the parts. I’m buying colored paper! We’re going to fold it! We’re going to glue it! Wow, this is just going to be fun.”
To which I mumbled: “My boys would throw the paper at each other and then someone would eat it. I have to give them a worksheet.”
“I’m making a crossword puzzle where every clue that’s a multiple of three has something to do with the Ninja Turtles.”
“Crossword puzzles breed insurrection. I think I’ll stick with practicing article usage,” I brooded.
“My boys gave me a thank you card!”
“They’re plotting against me.”
But when my worksheets ran out – my small sources of crafted comfort in a chaotic world – I had not taken the time to make any more; my heart sank a little.
I had to teach the extra period that day, and I had no work for my kids to do. I couldn’t just let them do their homework – two teachers had already been reprimanded for that. And I could not go in and teach from the hip – that would lead to blank stares and a startlingly quick withdrawl of attention. I was forced to consult the Internet. I found a game called Typhoon – a word game involving a nine bingo squares drawn onto a white board and cards with words with which the boys had to make a sentence. Despite my misgivings, I decided to give it a try.
I brought a candy prize for the first place team, and we played to much laughing when sentences were wrong, much screaming when points were earned, and much talking despite it all, because I’ll never have complete control. But they enjoyed themselves and there was no great rebellion of which I was so afraid. Surpisingly enough, for all of my self-regarding complaining, I had fun, too.
So now I play games, and my extra period does not feel like a scene from the Heart of Darkness. Jettapat, the grinning boy with no eyes behind his cheekbones and no work in his notebook, agreed. That week work began to appear on his pages, and I put my red pen away.
Jettapat is funny. I knew he was funny before. However, the week that I taught the eighth graders how to write plays (how does one explain stage directions to ESL learners? Anyone?) Jettapat was one of the first to finish, and his play was by far one of the funniest that I had read. Genuinely funny. What-a-ham kind of funny. And as I’m chuckling this kid keeps grinning.
Many of the boys are pressing their hands together to me when I pass. Others say hello and wave as I play soccer on the field after school, my name blasting from their mouths like a powerful sneeze with an M tacked on to the front – “Machoo!”
And all of this because of the games I play? No. Most likely it’s that time has passed, and I’m becoming a fixture at the school. The important distinction to make is that I’m learning. Teaching is a daily art of patience and passion. Days come when you can’t bring yourself to be passionate, so you are patient. On the other hand, your patience must be renewed by your passion. And renewal comes from a heart open to the layers in every situation.
Some of those notebooks are blank because the boys don’t understand. It’s my job to sit down and explain it again, and then again if I need to. Others play and disregard you because the material isn’t engaging. As the teacher, those are the boys I need to engage through games, explanation, excitement, even guilt – whatever works.
Unfortunately, there are boys who just don’t care. They know by the time they are thirteen that they can’t be failed, and their parents are influential in the government or rich already so working to get ahead isn’t necessary. The incentive isn’t there, and no matter how many times I lecture them or report them to their homeroom teachers (who will beat them with bamboo switches on the butt and legs) they will take it and keep on their easy path. This is the reality.
The key is to look from angles you hadn’t considered before. If these boys don’t want to work put them outside where it’s hot and they can’t be with their friends, at least then they won’t be a disruption. Maybe they’ll even work to stay inside. Encourage the other boys by telling the when they are doing well, and if they are in trouble let them know why; talk to them like adults. Don’t be condescending and avoid hypocrisy.
In the end these boys are lectured, yelled at, threatened with sticks, shoved sixty at a time into a classroom, with most everything they’re taught guided by one test after another, six days a week. All the while they still manage to have fun when they can. And the search for fun amongst all the expectations and requirements of becoming educated can be daunting. But every day they renew themselves for that search, in paper airplanes and Rubiks cubes under their desks, notes and comic books stashed away in their leather cases, their hands poised to whip them out at a moments notice. Because who knows when they will get another chance to be engaged that day. And they laugh at everything. Renewal is the key.
Even life in Bangkok renews itself.
Last Tuesday I woke at 4:30 in the morning and couldn’t fall back asleep. I showered, milled around my room and decided I could do a load of laundry. I climbed to the sixth floor where the washing machines are. Grayish light turned white against the walls and the clothes that dried on the four sets of racks gave the place a fresh smell. The floors were wet from rain the night before.
After my load was in and I paid my 20 baht, I went onto the roof and saw the sun rise orange over the white and brown square buildings. Everything looked washed. A breeze cooled my face and the buses and motorbikes just started speeding through a street not yet pulsing with heat from countless engines and exhaust.
My thoughts were simple, about the coming coolness of November, the color of the cars, and the way the cranes over the concrete skeleton of the unfinished building across the street looked like things sleeping and prehistoric. And a thought that was not quite a realization, but more like the quiet feeling you get when you’re confident in your ability to say a thing:
I live here.
