My first job was intolerable, so after four months, and much confusion about my legal status, I began employment at Immanuel English Academy (the love I have for Jesus in my heart). Here I was instructed to TEACH THE CHINESE WAY.
My first class was part of the summer program and had four students; three of them were four, and the youngest, Timmy, was three, and on his first day at school ever. My job was to keep them seated for six hours of NO CHINESE and gruelling pencil-pushing, and this is not an exaggeration. They had a five to ten minute break each hour, and after three hours, a short lunch and nap break.
Timmy did not know he had an English name, let alone that he was at school, and not part of a kung-fu film. For the first day he screamed in Chinese for three hours straight, and finding the results ineffective, set about fly-kicking me at every opportunity. Only the great Buddha knows what profanities were leaving his mouth; I can only assume it was: “I need to go pee-pee, why don’t you take me stupid lady who can’t talk?”
After about a week his father came in and asked me if his son spoke English yet. I told him “your son can say rabbit,” (which came at the great cost of gluing five sticks of glitter to a paper cut-out). The inner dialogue of course raged in screeching inflections: are you fucking crazy??? Your son doesn’t even know he has an English name, drops his pants when he needs to pee, and thinks he’s a Bruce Lee action figure … I’m covered in bruises, and he’s three! – No-one can acquire an entire language in four days!!
Oh, the expectations of some parents!
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My first class was part of the summer program and had four students; three of them were four, and the youngest, Timmy, was three, and on his first day at school ever. My job was to keep them seated for six hours of NO CHINESE and gruelling pencil-pushing, and this is not an exaggeration. They had a five to ten minute break each hour, and after three hours, a short lunch and nap break.
Timmy did not know he had an English name, let alone that he was at school, and not part of a kung-fu film. For the first day he screamed in Chinese for three hours straight, and finding the results ineffective, set about fly-kicking me at every opportunity. Only the great Buddha knows what profanities were leaving his mouth; I can only assume it was: “I need to go pee-pee, why don’t you take me stupid lady who can’t talk?”
After about a week his father came in and asked me if his son spoke English yet. I told him “your son can say rabbit,” (which came at the great cost of gluing five sticks of glitter to a paper cut-out). The inner dialogue of course raged in screeching inflections: are you fucking crazy??? Your son doesn’t even know he has an English name, drops his pants when he needs to pee, and thinks he’s a Bruce Lee action figure … I’m covered in bruises, and he’s three! – No-one can acquire an entire language in four days!!
Oh, the expectations of some parents!
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