All Vietnamese class art is this terrible. It must be traditional, because if it's not it's an international humanitarian crime. |
That light blue color under my left boob is the original color of this shirt. Sweaty. |
Some of my classes I'd like to herd into a bus, put a brick on the accelerator, and aim it at a cliff (not that I've given that particular fantasy any thought, Vietnamese Officials who no doubt track stuff like this), and some classes I'd like to adopt and take home to live in on my terrace (not that all 45-55 of them would fit!)... so you can probably say that I'm having a fairly ordinary teaching experience. I downright LOVE some of my students, and some are... trying. So, basically like kids everywhere.
Facilities are not high-end. As I've stated, the classroom sizes are extremely large, but the room remains the size of an average sized classroom that would fit 20-30 kids in America. Things are generally very clean, but lack basic amenities like sound systems. (For some reason, many of my second grade classrooms have huge LCD TVs hung up, but I've never seen them used. I don't know what they're for. All I know is that I have to ask for a boombox if I want one.) The teachers put a lot of effort into making classrooms effective places to learn, but they're on par with some of the more dingy schools I've been to. I guess that's an emerging country for you.
The view of one of my classes from the desk. |
I always have a Vietnamese TA in my classes. Ostensibly, they're there to explain directions to the kids and discipline as needed. In reality, some of them are awesome and effective, and some are almost completely useless. I've become very good at scanning for troublemakers while drilling vocabulary, but I have a lot to learn about what kids will react well to in terms of discipline. When I'm playing games and eliciting answers from individual kids I have a hard time dividing my attention between the individual and the 44-54 kids NOT answering a question at that moment.
The kids here are also used to rote memorization - information is generally one-directional in nature. Asking questions like "How do I say that?" or "How do I make that sound?" or "Why A and not B?" is discouraged in the regular teacher's classroom, and their behavior extends to my speaking/listening exercises - a child will simply not answer or refuse to participate (or, even worse, simply repeat whatever I'm saying or what they previously said), which makes assessing and addressing individual needs particularly challenging. I've been attempting to find ways to discover their problems without anyone telling me.
The biggest pile of stuff I've confiscated so far. |
Learning their names has different policies at different schools. I'm not encouraged to learn names with my second graders, but I've been given seating charts of the first graders and try to call on them by name every day. They've been forbidden from taking English names (something that previous generations of ESL students have been encouraged to do), which is fine with me, since it gives me the chance to practice my pronunciation and become familiar with common VN names.
The spines are to keep them from escaping? Or maybe the teachers? |
I believe I've finally gotten the hang of this teaching thing, in short. It's been a very stressful 4 weeks, with many, many bumps along the way (many of them not my fault!), but I've been trying to be like the supple reed and not the mighty oak, knowing that to bend and sway with the storm is better in the long term than breaking.
This was taken on the day that all schools in VN officially started. There were flowers, dances, martial arts, chants, and songs. It was a headache. |
Thank you for following along, and thank you for your patience! I've had a tough time dealing with the ramp-up of teaching and I look forward to making all these things make more sense in context in the future.
Love,
Ben
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Hi! Thanks for speaking up! :) - Ben