10 posts tagged “school”
Having a younger sister was lucky for me. Not only was she a willing listener, she believed every word I said - just like I believed every word my teachers said. And just like my teachers I sometimes spoke the biggest load nonsense. It was fun to tell my sister interesting facts with even more interesting embellishments. “The things we see” I once told her “are actually refracted upside down on the retina at the back of the eye, but our brains turn it the right way around for us”. True. “Baboons, also see inverted images, but unlike us their brains are not smart enough to turn the image around. So they see everything upside down”. Not true.
At university I was a tutor for a couple of years in Art History and Visual Communication and it was during this time that I had my 15 minutes of fame. My classes usually went well, word got around and in time there were so many people attending my lessons I felt like the lecturer. I would have given the tutorials for free at the time, just for the sake of it. It was fun.
After I graduated I decided to do some travelling. One of the first jobs that caught my eye was teaching English as a foreign language in far flung places in the world. It paid more than 10 times what I had ever earned before and I figured that it would look better on my resume than bartending in London or working on a kibbutz in Israel (two other options). Little did I know what a quagmire ESL teaching would prove to be or how hard it would be to extricate myself from it… The only way to make it count as CV-worthy experience ultimately was to go into proper teaching, which is precisely what I did.
Now I find myself teaching Art and Design at a lovely school in the Eastern Cape. All in all it is a fine job but it is not quite as enjoyable as I had expected it to be. The kids are neither as talented nor as interested in art as I had imagined them to be, which is draining. I have less time to make my own art than I thought I would have. Teachers in general and Art teachers specifically are not accorded much respect in South Africa and everyone knows that we earn an appallingly low wage. So the question posed to me today is certainly warranted: why teach?
I tried to answer the question honestly. I am teacher because it is a job that allows me to be my own boss, to set my own rules and be in control of my work environment. Art is important to me, which makes sharing my knowledge and skills in it feel important too. Teaching is one of the few jobs that comes with three months of paid vacation, it is a job that keeps me fit because I am always on my feet, and perhaps most significantly, I am rather good at being a teacher, which is gratifying.
My students nodded their understanding but after the class I caught the tail end of one of them saying how unimaginable it would be to finally be done with schooling only top return as a teacher. What a waste of freedom that seems to them.
I wonder if they are right.
Last year I considered working as a sales representative in Taiwan at the same company my wife works at but I rejected a job offer there because it seemed far too boring. Teaching art on the other hand has not been all that exciting either. What made it seem worthwhile was the belief that my students find my classes enjoyable and worthwhile – that I am making a positive impact on their lives. Today I realised that even my best classes are not enough to keep my students wishing they could be somewhere else, and that has affected me rather adversely. It really made teaching seem thankless on every level.
I suddenly find myself willing to reconsider a new line of work, amongst people my own age in the ‘outside world’ dealing with just about the only thing that matters to everyone – money.
Almost everyday for the past year I have been going to St. Andrew’s College and the Diocesan School for Girls across the road as part of my teacher training. In that time I have become quite familiar with the two schools, especially College where I did the bulk of my teaching practice. I have made friends with the staff, gotten to know the kids, learnt the layout of the campus and generally figured out how things run.
Just as I am well settled into the school though I am done with my teaching training. Today was the last day I had to go into the schools, and I must say that I am going to miss it. Both of the schools are lovely places to teach. The pupils are polite and respectful and the staff a welcoming team. The schools are beautifully maintained too, which makes working there that much more pleasurable. With all the resources and facilities available at the schools there is no limit to what can be taught or produced by the kids and that too makes them stimulating, creative places to work.
Going into a school next year with the usual discipline issues and a low budget is going to be a tough adjustment. Hopefully I’ll get a job at a school more in line with College and DSG and avoid the harsh reality of teaching that is the norm. I leave for Johannesburg this evening to see my cousin and his wife who were recently married in Italy. While I am up there I’ll drop my CV off at some good schools. Then I fly down to the Cape to see my sister and go for an interview at St. Andrew’s brother school in Claremont. When I return to Grahamstown next week I’ll have an interview lined up at an art school across the road from the university. I would imagine that at least one of the schools will offer me a post for 2008. In the mean time I am still strongly considering going to the UK next year to find a post there. The exchange rate between the British Pound and South African Rand is 14 to 1, which makes it an attractive option from a financial point of view. Also, the chance to live a train ride away from various enchanting European countries is appealing.
My fate at the moment is subject to the way the wind blows, but I am not too put out by that. Whichever direction I go to from here seems fine.
For the past 2 weeks in our Art method course we have been learning how to go about teaching ceramics to school kids. As usual we need to do some of the projects ourselves just to go over the techniques again and get a feel for the medium. The lecturers don’t really care about the artistic merit of what we do, as long as we have gone through the ‘making’ process. Nonetheless I always grab the opportunity to do something creative and try to produce a self-standing artwork. Often the lecturers think I am going overboard with the projects. One even asked me why it is that I want to be a teacher and not an artist. That gave me something to think about afterwards…
I always thought that art teachers had the ability to be artists in their own right, but chose to teach so that they could share their passion with others and generate a stable income as the case may be. The truth of the matter is that “those who can do and those who can’t teach”… I used to hate that stupid maxim until I started training to be a teacher. Now I can easily see the truth behind it… The vast majority of people training to be teachers with me know only the very basics of their specialist areas and surprisingly this does not hamper their ability to teach. Good teachers are basically distinguished by their ability to control a class and get information across in a positive manner. Those are the skills that are actually required to be a teacher. Still, I think that having a genuine interest in your subject area makes it easier to be inspiring when you teach, and having ability in that subject area makes it easier to give sound advice. It must be a nightmare to teach art for example when you can’t draw your ass from your elbow.
This morning I took in the first vase of a series to demonstrate various pottery techniques. The teacher took a quick glance at it and asked me rather caustically if I like flowers. I said I did. I meant to ask her if she knew of anyone who did not like flowers but held my tongue in case I had misheard the tone of her voice. I don’t think I did because she then asked if the thing was finished, implying, as art teachers do, that it was unsuccessful as it was. Needless to say I was thoroughly miffed. Granted the vase is hardly a work of art, but as a simple demonstration of the ‘pinch pot’ technique (which quite honestly a 3 year old could do) it was more than adequate.
It is strange how much we rely on compliments. They are half the reason we do anything. As a grown-ass man I thought I had become immune to criticism I don’t agree with, but that is obviously not the case. I guess if it was I would be a really hard person to get along with and a pretty harsh teacher too.
Why teach art? I guess it is a reasonable question, and one that I should have an answer for considering that I will be doing precisely that in a few months time. This morning I submitted this response to the art school where I am doing my training. It is not exactly academic or even well thought out, but it helped me to clarify the issue in my mind somewhat...
I. Art is priceless
For many people the value of art speaks for itself. They need only point out the great masterpieces around the world to attest its importance through the ages. Who would question the value of the Taj Mahal for instance? We are not surprised that it is a national treasure in India even though it is but a stone structure whose function is simply to act as an elaborate reminder of a long departed princess. We attribute infinite value to the way it looks, and what it says about the culture and history of the people who brought it into existence. This intangible, abstract value is similarly applied to Michelangelo’s arrangement of paint on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, as it is to a tiny porcelain bowl from the Ming Dynasty as it is to a large box by Donald Judd. They serve as priceless narrators of who we are and we have come from.
In today’s world the role of art is no less prominent than it was in times of antiquity. In fact more people are now inundated with art and aesthetic considerations on a day- to-day basis than ever before. Our choice of clothes, the shape of car we like, the music we listen to, the books we read, the movies we watch, the places we go on holiday – all of these things are determined by aesthetic considerations, right down to the colour of our toothbrushes. The very ubiquity of art makes its value almost incalculable.
Nonetheless, we are constantly dazzled by artworks sold for an exorbitant amount when really this is commonplace. Most of the current celebrities whose names rest on the tip of our tongues are artists who have each amassed great fortunes. Take JK Rowling for example. After writing the Harry Potter series as a waitress she is now the richest woman in England and will be go down in history alongside the great scientists, thinkers explorers and inventors.
In view of this art teachers justly stress the importance of art education. However they assert that its value goes far beyond just equipping students with the ability and drive to become successful artists in their own right. Art education is regarded as a special kind of subject that enables students to express themselves from the heart, develop a sense of self-awareness and build esteem in a way that other subjects just cannot. Perhaps more importantly still, the study of art is shown to be a socially unifying phenomenon because it transcends culture, race, ethnicity, gender, class or religion. One does not have to be a Christian to be moved by the sublime beauty of the Sistine Chapel, for example. It can be speak as clearly to a poor African girl as it could to an erudite professor of Art History. In short, art education positively influences attitudes, social skills, critical and creative thinking and engenders a deep sense of pride in mankind’s ability as a whole to create priceless things of beauty.
II. Art is fluff
As priceless as art may be however, it would be naive and idealistic to imagine that the majority of people in the modern world grant it more than a second thought. Despite the glorious works of art about us even educational institutions are inclined to think of the subject as fluff. Somehow the power it has to teach us about world history and the human condition, beauty and ugliness, the universe around us and within our imaginations always comes up short in the curriculum. The sciences are inevitably favoured. Many schools don’t even offer Art as a subject unless they happen to gain additional funding in which case the subject is added to the curriculum much like the icing on a cake: unnecessary but an appealing finish.
To be fair, it is not that difficult to understand why art is marginalized in the school curriculum. As an art educator himself, E. Lois Lankford snidely remarked that, “it won’t help me to decipher or complete my income tax forms, for that I need to read and write and compute, and the IRS would prefer that I not be too creative.” He went on to say that rather than depending on the arts, he depends on “the wonders of science” and the “magic of technology” to sustain the comfortable life that the 21st century provides. Indeed we all depend on the feats of engineering to keep a roof over our head, agriculture and industry to keep us clothed and fed, and financial institutions to manage our money. Art does not aid us in any practical sense. The significance of an exquisite carved, anatomically correct, wonderfully expressive life size sculpture of a human being pales in comparison to a scientifically developed pill half the size of a pea that has the ability to cure human being of an ailment. We depend far more on even the mechanics and plumbers of the world than we do on the painters and sculptors. After all, only a small fraction of the population depends on the arts for the livelihood it often relies on the patronage and philanthropy of others to sustain that vocation. Successful artists are famous largely because they somehow overcame the odds of being impoverished. We marvel them as colourful exceptions to the rule, much the way we marvel and cheer at elephants in the circus that can stand on one leg and do tricks.
The arts certainly have a place in the world. Few people would seek to deprecate its enormous aesthetic and emotional value, but that still doesn’t make it useful in the sense that the world needs it to survive and progress. Naturally schools need to prioritise their students learning in accordance with this and regard art education as a terribly fortunate rather than terribly necessity in the curriculum.
III. Art is priceless fluff
It would seem at this juncture that arguments upholding the value of art education are as compelling as those against, which leaves art educators in a rather uncertain position. Are they merely fulfilling a surplus need in advantaged schools or are they providing necessary knowledge and skills on par with the sciences?
Perhaps it would be most prudent to take the middle ground and concede that art is both priceless and fluff. To honour the former, it would take an extremely flawed individual not to be moved by any art or to think of something like the Sistine Chapel ceiling as anything less than priceless. It simply is, which means that the arts cannot be of little value in school. However, without the sciences there would be no priceless art to begin with. Michelangelo would not have had a ceiling to paint, the Taj Mahal would have fallen flat, and the tons of steel Donald Judd needed to make his giant box would still be embedded in rock. Science deserves credit for providing the medium for art to exist, which if you take it to its logical conclusion makes art the fluff.
Hence we can say that art is priceless fluff, but without shame, because almost every meaningful experience and encounter in life falls into the same category too. What’s the point of small talk for instance? Why bother smiling at people? Why smell the roses? Why wake up early to see the sunset? Why fall in love? Why believe in something? It would seem that without the priceless fluff there is not much left to inspire us to pursue the sciences that we so revere, much less to prolong our existence on this inexplicable planet. Priceless fluff the arts may be but they are as vital to the soul as the sciences are to the mind and should quite obviously be included in school education if balanced individuals are expected to emerge from it.
A while ago I observed how things operate in one of the underprivileged schools on the outskirts of Grahamstown. ‘Townships’ in South Africa refer to urban settlements that were planned for black people only and usually have inferior facilities and services. Although black people can now live wherever they wish, the reality is that they still live in the townships. By and large they are caught in a cycle of poverty that is next to impossible to escape.
As I discovered on my school visit in the township, the kids receive a rudimentary level of education, which means they can only get rudimentary jobs, which pay rudimentary salaries. So their kids will in turn go to equally poor schools and get equally low-end jobs with equally meagre salaries, and so the process repeats itself ad infinitum. On top of all that, the people in townships are more prone to crime, alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution and all manner of other social ills than those living in the nearby towns.
This morning I braced myself for another visit to a township school, but this one for mentally challenged kids. I expected the worst: grubby walls, bodily smells, screeching and gargling noises emanating from classrooms, hollow-eyed exhausted teachers and the air of madhouse. One of the students in my class actually decided she couldn’t face going there at all and stayed behind. But she might as well have come along because the school was absolutely lovely.
Unlike the usual township schools in the area, the school was immaculately kept inside and out. It struck me the moment we drove into the school property. The flowerbeds had obviously been attended to, the lawn areas were neatly mowed, the driveway had been swept clean, the classroom windows were sparkling, a plaque hang on each door signalling the use of the room behind it, the carports had shade covers, and there were signs directing you were to go. Inside the school was no less impressive. The staff room was warm and cosy, the corridors were lined with the kids’ artworks, the bathrooms were nice and fresh… you name it.
What impressed me most was the amount of teaching resources available. Each class was crammed with educational toys, objects of interest, books, posters, things they had made, notices and whatnot. The play areas had a big carpet with cushions for the kids to sit on. There was even a TV in each class and some computers.
In the first class I observed the kids were learning simple addition. Each had an abacus, a copy of the worksheet, and a student book wrapped in paper and plastic with the child’s name and class stuck in front. All the kids had a full set of stationary on hand and they were able to get along with their work without any hiccups.
In another class, the kids were learning about birds. The teachers had a real bird in a cage along with an actual nest, eggs, feathers and pictures to supplement their teaching. The lesson could not have been any more resource rich.
Similarly the classroom for older kids learning vocational activities was equipped with a fully fitted kitchen, a functioning ‘hairdressing salon’ complete with basins, and an area for making arts and crafts.
All in all it was a very pleasant place to be in. It completely outshone the previous township school I went to, which was bare to the bone. I think the success of the school I went to today can be attributed to the teachers who work there. They obviously love the kids deeply and care about the work they do with them and the school reflects that. Most of the teachers in the surrounding schools just want to collect a pay check at the end of the month. There is no excuse not to have tea and coffee for their staff room for example, or pencils and paper for their students to draw on. A lot of the things that make a school look and feel nice to be in cost no money at all – they just require teachers who take a bit of pride in what they do.
This morning I woke up not wanting to head out to the rural school I have been visiting for the past few days. The charm of being out in the middle of nowhere had suddenly worn off as well as the feeling of being a ‘guest’.
Some years ago I participated on the Japanese Exchange Teaching Program which places people in high schools to watch, assist and interact with the kids and staff, and it slowly killed me. The teachers there became increasingly irritated with the extra presence I created in the classroom, and once the kids got used to my otherness they lost the initial interest they had in me.
My experience at a rural school in South Africa is beginning to resemble that in Japan. I feel about as much a foreigner amongst these poor black kids as I did amongst the Japanese kids. They too look at me with a detached kind of curiosity and ask me questions like where I am from, what my house it like, and so on. They are cautious around me, approaching me in groups rather than individually and laughing nervously when I make a joke just in case I was being serious.
I have a soft spot for these kids that I did not have for the kids in Japan though. Perhaps to has to do with the fact that they can communicate with me and I can understand how they feel. While interviewing the kids today, some of their comments really made me sad. When I asked one of the girls in Grade 12 if she would send her own kids to this school one day she replied very emphatically that she would not because she hoped that her kids would get a “proper education” one day. Others said they wanted their kids to go to “white schools” because they are clean and safe and “have many things”. One of the Grade 12 boys lamented the fact that he has learnt nothing about computers because there is only one computer in the school, which only the teachers get to use. He complained about the high absenteeism of the teachers, the lack of resources like textbooks, and a myriad of other things that were obstacles to him finishing school well and getting ahead. I noticed the boy’s crisp white shirt, polished shoes and a neat haircut. He obviously took pride in himself despite being in a place where there is no one to impress really. He could just as easily have donned a pair dark sunglasses, pierced his ears with faux diamond earrings, walked with a swagger and carried a flip-knife in their pocket ready to use in a fight like so many of the others. Many of the girls when asked which school they would most like to attend cited one of the all-girls schools in town.
Towards the end of the day I interviewed the school principal who is simply remarkable. Not only is she principal, but also the school secretary, the Grade 12 English teacher, the HOD and chairperson of various committees. Somehow she manages to multi-task these things almost seamlessly. She keeps track of everything that is going on, handles her work well and goes about her day with good cheer. Given the conditions she works under, I think she runs an extremely tight ship. She ended the interview on a positive note by naming all the past pupils who have gone on to university and established themselves in professional careers. They say if you can reach but one person, it is all worth it… well she has reached hundreds - thousands actually. She has a lot to feel proud of.
Tomorrow will be my last day at the school. I have still to observe a class in microscopic detail for a formal analysis. I think the exercise is rather futile because teachers don’t really give a hoot for educational theories. They work intuitively, adapting to the people before them, the environment and the resources available. What difference does it matter if they happen to exemplify some hugely influential educational theory? What difference does it make if they don’t illustrate any of those theories in their teaching? In my opinion they can do whatever they like as long as two conditions are met: the pupils are gaining beneficial knowledge and skills, and they are treated fairly.
Once again I spent the better part the day at a rural school on the outskirts Grahamstown. The objective of which was to observe some classes to see how teaching and learning takes place there, and to conduct a few interviews with both the teachers and learners to find out what they think about the schooling situation they are in.
The first class I observed was an 8th grade Technology class. The lesson itself dealt with the differentiation between flat 2-dimensional drawings and 3-dimensional drawings that show depth and volume. As homework for the previous lesson the kids had to draw any object in 2-dimension. Many of them simply copied a frontal view of a house, which was the example in their textbooks. Others came up with their own objects, like a carton of milk or a box of matches. About half the kids did not draw their objects successfully in two-dimension, yet the teacher spent only a few minutes explaining again, in very abstract terms, that 2-dimensional representations show only the height and width of an object. Surprisingly she did not illustrate this concept on the blackboard, which would have been the commonsensical thing to do. As a result the kids who got their 2-dimensional drawings wrong the first time would almost certainly get them wrong a second time round (if there ever is a second chance to be had). Regardless, the teacher proceeded by instructing the kids two go ahead and draw their 2-D objects in 3-D at which point they worked completely intuitively without any knowledge of the different types of perspective explained in their textbooks. I was impressed by what most of them could do this way, but frustrated that I could not have guided them a bit more and explain some of the basic rules involved to make it easier.
It just so happens I taught this particular section of work only a few days ago at another school, so I asked the teacher if could teach it to the following class. She happily agreed and I ended up having a very rewarding class. The kids were a pleasure to teach. They sat in rapt attention, absorbing everything I had to say and kept up with the lesson as well as the last kids who I taught it to at an exclusive private school in town. I was thoroughly impressed.
One of the girls in the class who did particularly well was Sive, pronounced see-vah. She quickly grasped the idea of one-point perspective and drew very neatly. After the class she told me that she would love to be an artist one day and wanted to know how it was possible to get there. I advised her that the best way was to finish school and work on a portfolio in the meantime to showcase her talent. I also told her about other creative careers that she could go into with a talent in art.
For the rest of the day I couldn’t help thinking how difficult it would be for her to really get into an art related career (or any fulfilling career for that matter). She is at such an extreme disadvantage coming from a poor home and stuck a school that lacks every almost every resource imaginable. It was all very well to suggest she works on a portfolio, but how would she really do that? It is like me saying I wa nt to be a Formula One racer and someone advising me that I work on my driving skills…
For what it is worth I want to give Sive a nice thick sketchbook with a full set of colour pencils, along with and an eraser, sharpener and ruler – everything she needs to draw. Essentially I want her to have some outlet for her creativity, even if lasts only while she has paper left. If I have a chance I would like to see what she came up with and give her another volume of paper to continue working.
Maybe, just maybe, someone down the line will look at look at her sketchbooks, recognise her talent and offer her a scholarship to a good school or something. One never knows… Anyway the outcome is not all that important. What matters is that it will make her happy now. It will make a positive impression on her life and it will help her realise that good things can happen to anyone, even her.
Tomorrow I will be conducting some more interviews with the teachers and pupils and begin consolidating all that I have discovered in a rapport. Although the lack of facilities and general low quality of instruction has left a negative impression of the school, there have also been some very positive, uplifting aspects. The kids are remarkably disciplined and cheerful despite everything, and they sing like angels during assembly. The teachers have a strong bond between them and there are a few of them there (like the maths teacher) who are nothing short of amazing.
Today I observed an 8th and 9th grade English First Additional Language class. What that means is that the pupils take their home language (which is predominantly Xhosa in this region) as a first language and English as a second language. As such the English they learn is rudimentary compared to the level of English as a first language. Nonetheless, it soon became clear that even English pitched at this level went over their heads.
Their teacher began the lesson by handing out a poem. He then asked the pupils to summarise the poem, which took up rest of the 50-minute lesson. At no point did the teacher give the kids a guideline of what a summary entails for example, or indicate how long the summary was to be, or how to get started on it. While the kids were working on their summaries he all but disappeared in the background, emerging only to collect their summaries at the end of the lesson. There was absolutely no input from the teacher or any kind interaction with the pupils. At one point I asked the teacher if the exercise was a test, in which case it would have made sense, but he said it wasn’t so I remained perplexed, and frustrated too.
At the end of the lesson I looked over what the pupils had written and was shocked to discover that every one of the twenty-odd summaries I read made hardly any sense at all. On the whole they were just random words and lines lifted from the poem itself, pieces of writing that bore no correlation to the poem or a collection of grammatical and spelling errors. I wondered how their teacher could possibly find anything of worth in what they had written. I am still curious to know how he will go about marking it.
The trouble the kids had with the poem had nothing to do with summarising though, it had to do with the language. Their knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary is far below what would be required to even understand the poem, let alone write about it coherently. As such the classroom exercise was a waste of time. The kids learnt sweet nothing from it. What made the lesson even more exasperating was the fact that this was the second time the teacher has presented the poem to the class and asked them to do a summary on it.
I would imagine that their other subjects are taught in much the same way and that the pupils know far less than the minimum requirements in those subjects too. I feel sorry for them. How does one catch up after years and years of low quality education?
I feel equally sorry for the teachers in this kind of school. By and large I think they mean well. They evidently treat their pupils with care and respect, and teach them essential life skills that lie outside of the school textbooks, but when it comes to teaching the actual subject content they fall short. Perhaps it is because many of the teachers received a similar education so they don’t know any different. Perhaps the absolute lack of resources in the school makes innovative, productive teaching difficult to do. Perhaps it is just a symptom of poverty - School fees for an entire year at this school are only R120 (USD17), yet most of them cannot afford even that. It gives some indication of how poor these children’s homes actually are…
On the way home one of my classmates remarked that the children might not be getting the same quality of education that kids receive at the private schools just 15 minutes away (with school fees over R70 000. i.e. USD10 000 a year), but they are at least off the streets, in a place where they are cared for, and where that they are receiving some form of education. I suppose she has a point.
The word for this week was ‘hide’.
I decided to illustrate the noun form of the word in a mock paper cut-out of a cow in need of a new hide.
Actually I used to make a lot of stuff like this when I was teaching elementary school English in Taiwan. As silly as it looks the kids would really enjoy it and learnt a lot that way too.
When I think of them now I kind of miss them. They used to love my silly stories and would illustrate them so beautifully at home. I wisely returned colour copies of their homework and kept the originals because to me they are little works of art while to them they are nothing to fuss over. I know I'll be coming back to them for inspiration when I finally get around to doing a kids book.
This weekend I finished a detailed report on a lesson I gave a week ago on the question of design. After having it filmed and reviewed by my peers, I was clear on what went well and where I still need to improve. In fact I have been through the lesson so many times that I could basically give it again word for word.
I also wrote about what I think constitutes effective teaching, and the role of the teacher. It is basically a summary of all that I have learnt not to do in Asia. The educational system in Japan particularly is exactly the opposite of what it is here. Whereas Japanese kids are lectured to at school, given all the information up front and expected to memorise it as is, kids in South Africa are encouraged to find things out for themselves and to think critically about what they are taught.
In Taiwan I taught in a private school that allowed for more creative teaching, but with the obscene workload and the long school hours very few teachers had time to do anything special. Taiwan taught me more how to survive on four hours of sleep a night, to plan an entire lesson including handouts and exercise sheets in an hour and to manage unruly classes on a daily basis.
I often feel bad about wasting so much of my 20’s teaching ESL. Had I left that sordid affair five years earlier I could have completed a Masters in Education by now. Then again, I suppose everything we do counts as useful experience in the end because it makes us wiser. I certainly know a lot more about the world now than I did at 24.
After living in Taiwan I now know how dismal homes can be, how hard people will slog for a wage and how stifling overcrowding is. But I also know how wonderful it is to feel safe and secure like one does there, how kind and generous people can be and how delicious Chinese food is.
After living in Japan I know how far individuality can be stamped out, how robotic we are capable of being, how sad one can feel in a beautiful place and what it is like to be the subject of racism and prejudice. I also know but also how civilized it feels to live in a place that is perfectly maintained and how amazing it is for people treat one another with utter courtesy and respect no matter what they might think of each other.
It is said that our real education takes place outside the walls of schools. Perhaps what I do and say in the classroom doesn’t matter as much as I like to think does. The youngsters I teach already know so much more than I do about so many things, but one thing I have more of is life experience. Hopefully that will deepen the little lessons I write up and give my pupils something meaningful.