Teaching, Month 3 (from Scott's Perspective)

May 24th, 2012

Teaching, Month 3 (from Scott's Perspective)

*Note: Any student names I use in this piece have been changed.


         "Perhaps it is a human failing...Perhaps, someday, our ability to love won't be so limited. "
                                                           -Dr. Beverly Crusher
                           from Star Trek: The Next Generation: Ep. 4.23 "The Host"


    We've been living in Suwon for three months now. Time is pulling its usual paradoxical nonsense--days are long, but months are short. During our time here, we've been teaching kindergarten and early elementary at a hagwon (private school), and it's been a very interesting experience. I say that with ambivalence intended.
    Make no mistake and do not misunderstand me: when it comes to hagwons, we hit the jackpot. Our facilities are new and clean, our teaching materials are high-quality, and the Korean teachers and administrators we work with are some of the most wonderful people you could ever hope to meet. They have gone out of their way to help us more times than I can count. The Immigration Office, for instance, is usually a 3 to 4 hour ordeal for foreigners like us. Thanks to our Korean staff, however, we had an appointment and breezed in and out of the place in a cool 20 minutes. They've helped us with apartment maintenance, all of our paperwork, they've even helped us to arrange inexpensive flights to Vietnam for our vacation in August. Beautiful people, and I'm honored to work with them.
    Children, though. Children.
    Children tend to reveal the most extreme emotions in you, positive and negative. It's just the nature of it.
    These Korean kindergartners are, perhaps, the most beautiful children I've ever seen. Their smiles are like the sun, and when they hug you, innocent and adorable, it is an answer to your every prayer.
    Why, then, have I spent so many nights crying in despair? Wanting only some sort of escape?

    When we arrived at the school, the day after the Subway Move of Death, we were fortunate enough to receive a couple of days of training. This is not always the case with hagwons. I've heard stories of foreign teachers literally walking off the plane, jetlagged and disoriented, and then being driven to the school and ushered into the classroom to start teaching (here's your book, have fun!). We work at an awesome hagwon, though, so that wasn't the case for us. We even got to sleep in and come in late the first two days.
    The training was intensive. A mountain of information being steadily crammed, as if by plunger, into my brain. So many books. So many classes. So many new protocols and criterion to follow. We had to get through it fast, too; we started teaching on Friday.
    Part of the training--the first part actually--was observation of the previous teachers. I was lucky and actually spent the observation time with the students I would be teaching the entire next year. I tell you, friends and fam, these little kids were so adorable my jaw literally dropped. I was stunned by the disarming rays of their cuteness and charm and happy little voices. It took all I had not to just shout out "Come here, you!" and wrap those kiddos into big bear hugs all day. Refrain, I told myself, we're professionals here.
    ***A brief tangent to explain a interesting tidbit of Korean culture: in Korea, when you are born, you are automatically and immediately one year old. Birthdays are not viewed the same way here as in the U.S.A. Rather, everyone turns one year older on the lunar new year (in January). So, if you happened to be born in late December, for instance, you would be considered two years old in February, despite the apparently overlookable fact that you've only been alive for a few weeks. Hm.
    That having been said, I was observing my future students, who were 5 and 6 years old, Korean age. That means they were 4 to 5 years old, international age. That's a cute age. They're talking and smiling and singing little songs in their little voices with their chubby cheeks and glimmering eyes and MAN I JUST WANTED TO SQUEEZE 'EM! I was so happy. This is going to be a dream year, I thought to myself.

    Children reveal the best and worst parts about ourselves and about humanity. When a child laughs, she laughs in delight, in pure wonder and delight and joy. It (usually) isn't yet marked with the cynicism and irony of experience. It isn't yet filtered through some wall or dimmed through some shade. When a child hugs you, she hugs you fully and fearlessly. She doesn't know any better. She simply loves, and she simply expresses that love. It comes naturally to her. A child will giggle about a silly face or lips that go "pthbbbpt!" A child will hop around and laugh for no reason. She must. There is an enormous energy of excitement overfilling her, driving her to wiggle and twist and laugh and yell. A child will SCREAM in delight at the simple act of running. Life floods through a child like a network of lightning bolts, and you can see their faces shimmering with it, shimmering and radiant with LIFE. The world is beautiful, and colorful, and every drawing is full of smiley faces and flowers, and every shape is rainbow-colored .
    This is the part of the child that our hearts long for. We watch them, and somewhere in the bottom of our souls we feel that they must see something about this strange and difficult planet that we've forgotten.
    What about, though, that part of the child that takes a communal toy and screams "MINE"? That is willing to hit the face of a friend over an eraser? What about the manipulative part, who masterfully plays the role of the "cute one" or the "smart one" or of the "victim" just to get its whims indulged? What about the part of the child who will think of the cruelest taunt it can and shout it over and over at the girl across the room, until she cries? What about the part of the child that really doesn't give a damn about anything, or anyone, except himself?

    Imagine, if you will, a classic scene from a classic cartoon in which the bumbling main character is in front of a tall set of shelves filled with priceless vases, china plates, and other such treasures. Some cataclysm or another has set the shelves a'wobbling--maybe an earthquake, maybe a clumsy turn in a dog and cat chase sequence, whatever--and one by one, those delicate treasures are falling fast to the ground. What follows? The bumbling main character is scrambling left and right, to and fro, catching every plate, every vase, the crystal glasses, until the fragile stack in his arms is comically high! And there's more coming!
    Usually, everything ends up breaking anyway.
    This is the best metaphor for my first two months of teaching kindergarten that I could possibly come up with.
    It didn't take long for my adorable, adorable children to reveal their demonic sides. For the most part, the children weren't willfully defiant or malicious (with one bratty exception), they were simply SO full of energy that nothing I could say or do could possibly convince them to calm down and listen to me. There are always exceptions and it's always a spectrum, but in general my class was full of single children or older brothers/sisters who were still unused to the notion that there was anyone else in the world to listen to other than them. That there was anyone else to pay attention to other than them.
    It also didn't help that, being "6" years old, they were largely incapable of anything. Sharpening pencils, for example, was an OUTRAGEOUS process, lasting fifteen, twenty minutes, and almost always ending in a whining, bickering fight. And then, crack, almost every pencil would break instantly, the children having yet to understand much of their subtler fine motor skills, and the whole circus would start over. Could erasers be passed out fairly and efficiently? Of course not! "His eraser is bigger than mine, Scott Teacher! Why did I get one so, so small?" Well, truth be told, probably because Mr. Eraser-Passer-Outer is engaged in an elitist scheme to pass out all the good erasers to his best friends only, and then make a point to rub in the fact that "Oh, you're LAST" to the whiny little brat who asked the question in the first place. Vicious! Could we share the surface area of the tables with our table-partners fairly and reasonably? Of course not, Scott Teacher! Could anything at all be done to quell the shrieks of "Don't DO THAT!" that followed almost every stupid little interaction between the whiny little students? Of course not, Scott Teacher! Could we write a small letter "a" in our phonics books without tearing the pages to shreds with our needlessly sharp pencil points? Of course not, Scott Teacher! My job was to scramble around the classroom, like that classic image of the Headless Chicken, frantically picking up the pieces.
    Oh, and the tattle-telling! Dear Lord the tattle-telling! "Scott Teacher," one would say, near to tears, "Brian said my name 'JasIN,' not JasON, like this, 'JasIN!'" Oh the injustice! Or "Scott Teacher! Kelly did to me like this!" And then demonstrate a light and accidental brushing of a shirt sleeve as if it were an armed robbery.
    Ten tiny voices always yelling over each other "Teacher, help me! Teacher help me!!! Teacher help me!!!" "Sally did this!" "Brian did that!" "Teacher help me!!!"
    Even the good kids, when asked to pass out the crayons (as is the "Crayon Leader's" sacred duty) would invariably drop them all in a clumsy flailing of chubby little kid limbs, resulting in at least 10 minute's delay, a swarming of eager little kindergartners to the spill site, a shrieking of "NO! I'M THE CRAYON LEADER!!!" whenever someone tried to help pick them up, and of course another flurry of passionate tattle-telling ("Scott Teacher! She said, 'No I'm the crayon leader!' Like this, 'No I'm the crayon leader!' She said that!"). All the while, poor Scott Teacher--the real victim in our cartoon here--throat hoarse from yelling all day (not in anger, just as a desperate attempt to be heard above the shrieks and yells of the children), would try his damnedest to wrangle the energy back, to get them back in their seats and quiet, to reestablish what shred of order seemed possible in this Horrid Pit of Chaos.
    The stakes are so HIGH, I thought to myself. I'm meddling with these children's lives, for God's sake! How many of the world's neuroses are caused because of some stupid mistake made by a kindergarten teacher during the most delicate period of development? Oh no, the fate of the future is hanging in the balance!!!
    And we had deadlines! The parents need to see progress, they want to see those workbooks full! We're on a schedule here! And we're BEHIND!!! The anxiety!!! How can I get these children to fill up a worksheet when they can't even write yet?!?!
    One problem solved, another one sprouts in its place. One Ming vase caught from the wobbling shelf, a whole set of China on its way down.
    More than once, at about 6 pm when the day was ending, I would let a big deep breath into my lungs, a big satisfying sigh that would flood into locked little alveoli way down in my chest, and muscles in my neck and back would unclench for the first time that entire day, and I would realize, a bit concerned, that I hadn't taken a single deep breath in over 8 hours.
    This went on for a while. It was…tiring.
   
    What happens to that part of us that sees the world in pure and joyous wonder?
    When does that light that shines so brightly in the eyes of a child go out?
    We go to school. We have our teacher who tells us, hundreds of times a day if necessary, that it's not okay to laugh out loud. You can't stand up. Get to work! Stop that! BE QUIET. The teacher will use any means necessary to accomplish this. She HAS TO, or she'll go out of her mind! She HAS TO, or these kids will not be able to function in any meaningful way. The teacher HAS TO. So the teacher will take away everything that you want, until you comply. The teacher will punish you with scorn and raised voice, with humiliation, with fear and reproach, until you comply. The teacher MUST. MAKE. YOU. BEHAVE.
    We play with other children. The other children don't understand what they are doing, the other children don't understand empathy or consequences. The other children are just as maniacally young and emotional and driven by desire as you are. And so one day, because of their own childhood mania, they say you are ugly. They say you are stupid. They call you a stupid face, a meanie, and a liar. They don't know what they are doing, which makes them capable of almost perfect cruelty. And, even though a child like you can bounce from sobbing hysterically to laughing and running in a matter of seconds, a voice will always be echoing somewhere in the underground caves of your subconscious: "You are ugly…ugly…ugly…"
    Then puberty hits, and obviously that can't be good.
    We hear the news on the TV station. We see our first movie with a graphic murder scene. We get yelled at by our parents. Little by little, one by one, tiny little twigs of innocence crack in half. We are so steadily and constantly manipulated by a system of reward and punishment that tells us who we should be, what we should act like, what we should look like, that by the time we're in middle school, all that's left in our eyes is a dull glaze. 
    The fire has been stomped out, or turned into idiotic, reckless rebellion.
    It was all necessary. What choice did anyone have?

    There were days when I didn't want to see any of them ever again.
    When it took all I had to refrain from screaming at them, or just breaking down and sobbing.
    Frustration and irritation squashed the love I felt for them. Dulled its fire to a smoky coal.
    What kind of love is that, anyway?
    Oh yeah.
    "Conditional."

    Don't be fooled: with every yang comes its yin.
    The first two months were NOT, as I made it seem, all bad.
    For some reason, even though I often needed to yell at the children, take away their stickers, or make them cry, they seemed to really like me. No, they loved me.
    Even when I had forgotten how to love them.
    I have a small sense of what the Beatles must have felt like, getting in and out of limos and jets to throngs of screaming fans. Every time I arrive at the school after the kids do, they squeal in delight when they see me approach. "Scott Teacher! Scott Teacher!" they yell, jumping up and down and waving with both hands, grinning ear to ear. If I get close enough, they'll straight up dash at me and give me a full-body arms-and-legs hug, the kind of hug that's so packed full of love that you'd think it could only exist in the Care Bears universe.
    And it's not just in the morning or the last part of the day; it's all day. Brief 10 minute breaks between class periods. The kids go to the bathroom, then come back, see me, and start squealing "Scott Teacher! Scott Teacher!" And wham! another Care Bear hug. With fervor! FERVOR!
    That love sustained me when I was sad and tired, and didn't know how to serve these children. And I got a lot of it.

    Not every fire gets stomped out, of course. Not every light is swallowed by the darkness.
    There are those beacons of light in our lives that remind us of who we really are, that help us remember that life is beautiful. You know them. Those few, special teachers throughout school that helped you learn more than was written in the textbook. Those teachers that ignited a spark in you, instead of extinguishing one in you.
    How about those musicians that played that perfect song when you were in middle school or high school? That song that filled you up with something that felt like God and made you want to dance or sing or scream or laugh or cry?
    Or the actors that told that perfect story on the silver screen?
    How about the athletes with their superhuman skills, inspiring us to greater and greater possibilities?
    The martial artists who seemed to defy all physical laws and who left you wondering "How do they do that?"
    The dancers? The cooks? The singers? The authors?
    Maybe you were lucky like me, and had an amazing family of beacons who nurtured your evolution. Maybe you were lucky like me, and had friends who were all powerful beacons, and helped you grow beyond yourself again and again.
    The beacons are always more powerful than we think.

    So what am I trying to say here? I'm not really sure anymore.
    Maybe love is when you accept someone for who they are. Even when they're a little 5 year old who doesn't yet understand the difference between speaking and shrieking, who doesn't want to sit down when you ask them to, and who doesn't know how to stop taking things so personally. Hell, I know a lot of adults pretty much like that.
    Maybe love is also knowing how to let a situation be what it is. The only part of myself that was shriveling and wilting in that classroom was the part that needed. to. make. it. different. No, little kids! Grow up! Stop being a rambunctious kindergartner and be a well-behaved college kid on the honor roll! NOW!
     Of course, that doesn't mean I won't try. It doesn't mean that I'll stop caring and read a book in the corner while the kids tear the room apart. I'll do my best. I HAVE been doing my best. But I don't need to define my happiness based on whether the kindergartners are quiet or not.
    I've gotten better at the job since those really difficult starting months. Yes, I still have frustrating days--I doubt I'll ever meet a teacher who doesn't have frustrating days--but things are really getting better and better.
   
    On a final note, we reflect each other. Humans, I mean. We reflect each other.
    Nowhere is this reflective quality of reality more clear than in the classroom. When I enter a classroom with enthusiasm and optimism and an intention to have fun, the class goes great. The kids are engaged and responsive and better behaved, because they're reflecting my energy back to me. However, when I enter a classroom downtrodden and depressed and frustrated, the class goes down the tubes. The kids are restless, prone to fighting, and eager to be anywhere other than there. Because they're reflecting my energy back to me. I AM the source, and MY choices determine how my life feels.
    This is true of all relationships and all work.
    If I can choose what I send out, the reflection will adjust accordingly.
    It's a skill, and it's not necessarily very easy. But it may be the only skill worth mastering.
    At any rate, here's to the hope that we can shine a bit more light, and be beacons to someone whose light has gone out.
    Cheers!