Call me Teacher

Because that's what my students call me! I'm trying to get them to learn my name is Peter...

Ok! So the past couple days a lot as happened and I've been absolutely exhausted. But, as I frequently find, exhausted is one of the best states of being. When one has very little to do, and can sleep as late as they want and work as little as they want, it is easy to start feeling bored, restless, lethargic... At least for me, this leads to something like existential dread, and wondering what on earth the meaning is in all of this. Without something to ground you, you're floating off in space, and there's nothing there to sustain you. I've found that, as ironic as it sounds, the busier I am, the happier I am, and the more energized mentally I become.

Anyway! Enough rambling, because I am tired and don't want to be typing forever.
We've had very long days because at 9am we have Vietnamese language class, until 11am or so. It may be a futile exercise... we've so far learned how to pronounce the letters, and what the six tones of the language are, so we can sort of stumble our way through sentences, but will we really learn to say anything and remember it after two weeks? Perhaps the important things will stick with us. I know how to order an ice coffee with milk. Cafe sua da. Except there are many more symbols and accent marks. Anyway, after the class our time is kind of fluid, and we just have to write a lesson plan for the class we teach later that day. Somewhere in there we go to lunch. The first day (Monday, ie yesterday), we viewed a demo class in the afternoon. We watched Linh, the languagecorps teacher, teach a class using the same structure we learned, and we were able to see what she did well and how she organized her lesson. After this, the girls teach a class together around 5, and Graham and I teach a class together around 7. At some point we'll have to split up and teach the class solo and observe each other.

Going into my first class, I was extremely nervous. I kept wanting to just run away and retreat to my comfort zone. Why couldn't I just have stayed at home, playing computer games and drinking hot tea that my mom served me?
But no, here I was, and I was going to go through with it. My brain told me that tons of people did this kind of thing and it wasn't that hard. I KNOW English, I speak it every day. I KNOW the way to teach, I've been learning it for two weeks. And, I think I can be pretty good with people, when I'm not being awkward. And even that awkwardness endears me to people sometimes.
During my class, the nervousness kinda melted away, and I learned that it was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. We had our lesson plan, we just had to follow it. We had to be patient when the students had trouble with things. We had to be careful to pronounce things correctly, and speak slowly so they got the words. We had to keep energized about what we were doing, even if it was boring to us, it was completely new for them, and they WANT to learn. Our class has 12 people, age 18 to 25, mixed gender but mostly female, at the beginning level. They know some stuff, but not a lot. Frequently they hit a block and don't know the word for something. But they learn quick and are eager to know more. They're all there on their own time, it's not like it's a public school and they're forced to be there.
Anyway, the first day went great. Graham and I kinda switched off with leading things, we were both confident and energized, kept the pace moving. The class was an hour and a half long. Feels like a long time, especially when you're on your feet, but it does go by quick. Our students are awesome... some of them are shy, which is what I expected. But some are talkative and always asking questions. In fact, it's kind of hard to get them to stop talking to each other sometimes. I don't want to treat them like little kids, ya know. It's kinda weird, cuz during training we were told that teachers were very well respected in asia, and all we had to do was walk into a room looking and acting like a teacher, and we immediately had their respect until we lost it by doing something stupid. It's not like American schools where you need to earn respect first. So, I was expecting all of their eyes to be transfixed on us the whole time, but it didn't happen like that. Could be worse, though, for sure. Our first lesson we did introductions and then a lesson about professions and locations where they work. Like, doctor and hospital, banker and bank. It went well and they got the words quickly, so the second day (today) we stepped it up a notch...

Today did not go as well. I wouldn't say it was a bad day. In fact, I'm glad how it turned out because we know so much more now, and we were able to change and adapt our plan in the middle of the lesson to meet their needs.
Our new topic was traveling. We made our dialogue longer and used many more new vocabulary words, in longer sentences. We introduced a ton of names of places around the world, like Eiffel Tower, Pyramids of Egypt, Great Wall of China. I underestimated how hard some of those words are to say for nonnative speakers. So, they were really struggling, and we pared down our dialogue and the number of new words we introduced, so we made it a little better, but it was still not ideal. You could tell they were having trouble with many of the words, and it was just too much to keep track of.
The worst part was that our class was being observed today by Linh, so that made us nervous. At the end, she told us what she thought, and how we could do better. Ultimately, it helped a lot, and we got some good advice from her. We went from too easy the first day, to too hard the second day, so we need to make it simpler and have less new words, but have them learn words they don't know, so it's something new. Our plan is to continue the theme of traveling tomorrow. It's quite alright to have a 2-day lesson. We'll still talk about traveling, but slow down a little and introduce less new words so they can handle it. Luckily we still have about a third of our lesson plan from today that we can carry over and use tomorrow. So, that means less planning tomorrow!
The smiling faces, waves, and sayings of "goodbye, teacher!" as they left the class told me that even though it was a tough lesson, they would be back to learn the next day, and I would be back to better attune the material to their needs.


Without meaning to, I've typed way too much again. Body exhausted, mind is still going a mile a minute.

One more thing to add, though: the two girls who work here, Linh and the administrative assistant Hien, are some of the nicest girls ever, and they've been showing us places to eat breakfast and lunch during the day and cook us dinner after our class every night. Well, two nights in a row at least. I won't expect them to feed us constantly. But it's great to be mothered a little. The homecooked dinners are just amazing and I get completely stuffed. Rice, and spinach things, and chicken that's all garic-y, and fish, and you put it all together in your bowl and shovel it in with chopsticks. Yesterday they made us this wonderful dessert called "buh" (I don't remember what the tone is or how it's spelled), and it's made of avocado, milk, sugar, and ice. It doesn't sound like a dessert... but it's sooo good! It's like a pudding almost. They also serve us cut-up grapefruit which is 10000 times better than grapefruit in the states. It's sweet, not bitter, and comes off in slices, not little pieces that fall apart. Also, you can dip it in this chili-like substance, and somehow it works.
Ah! I could talk all day about food. I've been eating four meals a day... 9am breakfast, 12:30pm lunch, 5:30pm dinner, 10pm late dinner...
You'd think I'd be losing weight with this healthier food, but sadly no. especially not when everything is dirt cheap, even cheaper than Cambodia. I've got over 1,000,000 Dong in my pocket, and I'm living large! Things will probably (hopefully) settle down at some point, though.

Ok, time for bed soon.

Peace!