Oh, right, I have a job

In the last week and a half, I’ve mostly worked. Those of you who know me very well might be surprised at that, but the people I work with seem unsurprised. And speaking of work, let’s see, how is that going? My school is basically an IELTS preparation course. IELTS is the test that ‘foreign’ students have to take to get into English-speaking universities in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, etc etc. The school has classes from beginner (I mean the “ABC” kind of beginner) through eight levels up to the actual IELTS preparation course. Each course lasts through a five week term with class four hours a day. For about the first month I worked, I was filling in for teachers on holiday, so I had different classes and different schedules. Now a new term has started and I have a regular schedule.

I have one level three class with twelve students. I think level three is good for me. They are advanced enough that I can talk to them without always having to resort to sign language, my acting skills or drawing silly pictures on the board. They are not so advanced that they ask me questions about adverbial clauses and nominative phrasal verbs and intransitive quantifiers and all that jazz that I don’t know much about… Plus with only twelve students, some of whom I taught last term, I can actually remember all their names, which is good. So I usually enjoy teaching that class.

I also have two level five classes, which so far have been mostly another story. I only have them two days a week, so I don’t get to know the students as well. And, obviously, they are a lot more advanced. So they are doing things like speed reading, academic essays (that is the theory at least), impromptu speaking etc. So, in those classes I think of myself as a surfer who is being dragged along by the cord between my foot and my board which has been attacked by a shark. In level three I can usually keep on my feet. Well, maybe I will get better after a couple weeks. Four hour classes tend to defy all possible efforts in terms of preparation.

So I take ‘pages’ from my speech class, my myriad writing classes, and really nothing from the ‘English’ classes I’ve had. My attitude in the classroom is, well you could say lazy. These are students who are trying to get into university abroad, and our classes are supposed to prepare them for that experience. So, being inspired by all my favorite professors, I tell them that they can get out of the class whatever they are willing to put into it. People who don’t bother to do the work sort of annoy me but I don’t spend a whole lot of time lecturing them, they’ll figure it out when they take their exams. The idea of me actually motivating someone else is a little laughable. Anyway, that is the job.

Outside of the job I am still thinking about getting back into a Vietnamese class. Somehow being an English teacher doesn’t help my Vietnamese much... I have used a bit of that in my class, for example in a writing assignment about ‘famous buildings in your city,’ I kept running into the One Legged Temple. This place is generally called, in English, the One Pillar Pagoda, but in Vietnamese is called one-legged… I can understand just enough to know if my students are talking about me on break, but not enough to know what they are saying. Not really all that helpful! I can, however, tell motorbike taxi drivers which way to turn, not as if they listen to me but at least I can tell them!

And it is summertime, even here in Hanoi, which is hot with a capital T. Downpours happen a lot. The other day a huge tree was knocked down just up the street from my school. And on occasion the downpour climbs up into my bedroom through the three inch 'crack' under the door. I haven’t really figured that out yet – there is a door which seems to open towards the rest of the building, but there is some space out there which apparently has no purpose whatsoever other than so that you can open the door which goes to it. And for breakfast this morning I passed on my typical Vietnamese iced coffee for a Mocha which I didn’t much like, Vietnam is not a place where I miss coffee from America…