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When I first started thinking about ESL - and I think this is kinda true of most teachers in Asia - the actual teaching and the kids placed low on my list of priorities. The money, the culture and the "Holy-shit-what-am-I-doing-after-I-graduate????" were my driving motivations. I didn't know a thing about teaching children. In fact, I never really considered the job itself, or wondered whether I'd be able to actually do it, until I dropped off my Visa application in Vancouver.

During my brief and bewildering phone interview, I made up some lie about teaching swimming and basketball at the YMCA. The sad reality is that the closest I ever came to instruction at my Y job was beating punk-ass kids with a broom handle when I caught them stuffing lockers with soaking wet paper towels. I hated them. I whacked those precious children fiercely and they learnt a valuable lesson about not putting things in lockers that don't belong there.

In my interview, I said that I loved kindergartners which wasn't quite a lie: I didn't know any kindergartners at the time, so I couldn't really say if I liked them or hated them or wanted them burnt alive or what. But one of the only valuable skills I took out of university was the ability to pimp myself with words, and I did so enthusiastically despite the fact that I was ripping stoned. Sometimes things become instinct, and it's especially easy to sell yourself as a Hero of Modern Education when the person you're selling to doesn't know what "swimming" means and needs to go get a translator.

And so I came here, wreathed in falsehoods and newfound doubt, and you can imagine my surprise when I woke up one morning to find that I loved my job.

"Oh Clemens, you sappy motherfucker," y'all must be saying. "Listen to you cater to the child-rearing potentials, the maternally minded audience. Stop trying to get laid with wannabe preggos. I don't believe your rigmarole about loving kids for one second!"

Well let me tell you that it's just as surprising and mildly shaming for me to admit as it is for you to endure, dear doubter. And I would never say "rigmarole", by the way, that's a totally gay word and I won't let you pin it on me.

But it's the truth, you know, about really liking school. I mean sure, there are shit days and shit classes and sometimes children still get whacked when I'm hungover and in a pissy mood and they tweak me just the wrong way. Some kids just don't want to learn and they spend their 35 minutes bullying and looking surly and swearing in Korean. I've bashed many heads together, wrestling style, and I've dragged jelly-legged screamers down the hallway to chat with the fearsome Sue-Teacher. I tell miscreants that I'm going to cook their heads in an oven, that I'm going to throw them out the six-storey window. I often threaten their eyesight with a particularly rusty push-pin. It's not all fun and games.

But I feel warm, I glow, every time a kid tries something innovative with English, each time they push their inexperience in new directions. I see eyes light up when tiny faces finally get it and the kids look so proud and I feel so proud and the classroom pulsates with good, honest pride, the kind of pride you could never condemn in a thousand years. Today a girl brought me a hilariously nonsensical poem along with her homework, not because I asked for one but just because she loves to write. Today I taught poetry and rambled about Robert Frost's syllabic structures, drawing pictures of metaphoric eggs on the whiteboard and I felt high as a kite, a big grin painting my face as I gushed. Today I sang Christmas carols and liked it. Today I woke up and looked forward to teaching.

Us ESL folk invest a lot of time in actually - gasp - teaching. It can preoccupy your thoughts, consume your days, and it's a lot heavier than I would've ever dreamt possible. And yet, when a full platoon of ESL teachers have just finished a 9 hour day and we're still wading deep in thought about kiddie progressions and regressions and retarded antics and which ones are Way Too Fat and classroom dynamics, you know something good's going on. You know you're in the right place. I guess sometimes you just have to arrive at that place before you can figure it out.

Posted by Chris at 09:42 AM >> Commentations (4)