So my Teaching Life begins:
If I walk into a classroom one more time with delighted shouts of “Mr. Georgie!!!!” I will not be impressed….! It would appear that Vietnamese students do not understand the concept of “Mr” vs “Mrs.”.
Most of my classes were ok today except for two classes, where there was a boy in each that was very badly behaved and after countless warnings I told them to leave my class. Both of these requests were unsuccessful as the kids point blank refused to move so I didn’t know what else to do…
The problem is that the local Vietnamese teachers will smack the kids across the hand, the head or the face when they are not behaving, and if they refuse to leave then they are physically removed from the classroom kicking and screaming… I do not do this, and the kids know it, which makes things difficult. I concluded with “I’ll speak to you later!”
I later wrote a text to my friend telling her that “two little sh**s wouldn’t leave my class today!” and nearly accidentally sent it my boss! Phew.
We were playing a game today where the student had to answer my English question and then got to throw the ball to the next person in the room. (By the way, a great game, you should try it.)
However, I highly overestimated their throwing and catching abilities and so the ball almost always ended up in completely the wrong place, more often than not, right in someone’s face, followed by mass shouting and giggling,! The final straw was when it got thrown out the open window and I had to send someone to go and fetch it…. which the class thought was hilarious…. *sigh*
I have also discovered that playing Hangman as a way to introduce the lesson is also a non starter, because often they have learnt the words so much, (Vietnamese teaching methods involve high amounts of repetition) that within two tries they don’t guess a letter but guess the entire word or phrase! I now make them spell it all out, telling me every individual letter, before letting them win.
On my first day I was given the number of a local xe om (motor taxi) driver called Tien, and so now had my own personal driver. On my way back to school after the lunch break today he went over a speed bump at about 100 miles an hour, to the point where I thought we were going to take off! He then said immediately after “No hands! You don’t need hands!” and gesticulated at me to take my hands off the back of the bike. “Relax” he said. RELAX?!
In the afternoon I turned up to my last class and the teacher asked me where I had been. Apparently, I was meant to alternate the penultimate and last class every week but no-one had told me this. (I was soon to find that no one tells you anything, ever, but expects you to know everything, always!)
The Vietnamese teacher told me that her class hadn’t had a teacher for the whole lesson. I explained that no-one had come to tell me while I was teaching the other class that I was meant to be in this class, and no-on had come to take over the other class… she said that was the other Vietnamese teacher’s problem, not ours! And so, the chaos and disorganisation continues…
We played SNAKE where you write “snake” on the board and then the next word must begin with the last letter of the previosu word. So for SNAKE the next word must begin with an “e” e.g. elephant and the next word must then begin with “t” e.g. teacher. It was fine until one girl said “Not a book” and I had no idea what she meant. I explained to her it was just one word, and didn’t understand how she hadn’t understood this from everyone else! Soon, everyone else was shouting “Not a book!!” at me, until eventually I realised they were saying “notebook”! Impromptu pronunciation lesson…
I couldn’t get hold of Tien and so got a lift home from a xe om driver who was stood waiting at the end of the street. I told him I’d pay 20,000 VND (as I now know it should only cost 15,000 VND but they charge me more because I am a foreigner.) He agreed, but when I paid him I gave him 50,000 VND and he only gave me 15,000 VND change. The cheek! I death stared him and demanded the rest and for once, it worked! Yey, go me.
That evening I head over to the volunteer house to eat toffees and play cards. The volunteers are on a separate program to me, but it’s run by the same lady. I also have requests from them to buy Sprite, Fanta, ice cream and phone credit from the local store. All the important stuff!
