Junior class, #85, is a raucous crowd of 35 students. Half boys, half girls. Clad in Yali's red, white and blue, athletic-like school uniforms. This number varies between 27-35 students, depending on the day, which boys decide to skip class to play basketball, which students wander in 5-10 minutes late and which students leave the the other foreign teacher's oral English class to join mine.
The latter statement is by no means a way of saying that I am a good English teacher. Class #85, like all classes, has approximately 60-65 students, but since they are an "advanced" class (meaning the students in that class tested higher on their Chinese, Math and Science admissions tests...not English) they are afforded the opportunity to take oral English classes in a smaller setting.
The class is divided up. 35 students go to my section, 35 go to another foreign teacher's section, twice a week. Some days, students decide that they want to switch teachers. They have left the other foreign teacher's class because she is, in their words, "too mean", "gets too angry" or "is ugly". I noticed this population spurt one day when my class had a several unfamiliar faces in it.
Adjective-diversity aside, with the lack of oversight and a communication barrier, there is really no way of preventing this floundering in and out of the classroom. Threats of telling their head teacher only work so much. Sure, you can give them a bad grade, but since grades are basically meaningless (everything revolves around the tests they take after the end of the Junior 3 and Senior 3 years) that does little good. I am not even sure if the students, though it has been explained to them numerous times, understand the difference between and "A" and an "F", except that one is "hao" (good) and one is "bu hao" (not good).
This class exemplifies everything that is wrong with the Chinese education system. While that blatant charge is very subjective, I can tell you that there are some students that can speak better English, but because their test scores in Math, Chinese and Science were lower than their classmates on their admissions test, they do not go to the advanced class. They stay in their classes for three years, until the next admissions test, at which point, if they test well enough, they can continue at Yali. Otherwise, it is back to the school shopping block. Are you confused yet?
Back to class #85. Who could suspect that with names such as "Freeze", "Mirage", "God", "Answer", and "Fred-Almighty", there would be any sort of discipline problems with these students? The fact is, Chinese students see oral English classes as a time to goof off. Who can blame them? With their schedule, I would want to clown around with my friends too.
Last Thursday though, freshly annointed into a new semester of teaching, Class #85 had me sulking in anger. With chairs arranged in a "speed dating" style, to encourage conversing for an activity I had planned, the students immediately went to work in dismantling the set-up to group the chairs together with their friends. Big deal, right? Imagine, if this happened 7 times in one week. In America, most students would realize that, "oh, there is a pattern to this set-up, we probably should not rearrange the chairs." Not here.
A group of 14 year-old girls, habitually late, saunter in with a West Beverly High attitude and fake Adidas and Nike bags slung over their shoulders (on another note: Trademark infringement is the lay of the land in China, which is great if you like a good, cheap knock-off, but awful if you actually care about having your intellectual property protected). The girls gab and laugh, completely unaware to the feelings of the teacher at the front of the class, eyes closed and breathing deeply and just waiting for what could be minutes for the vocal level to die down. This happens in every class. 18 times a week. Numerous times over the 45 minute stretch of each.
The common-sense standards of Chinese people are light-years away (not in an evolutionary-advanced, "I am an arrogant American" sort of way), but in a way that says their concept of the matter is just different. Different rules apply here. Coupled with the spacial relationships that the Chinese have with their environment, it can be a recipe for high blood pressure for any teacher, any public bus passenger and any escalator rider.
Which brings me to the title of this essay. Contortionist's will. It pays to be flexible in China. Buses run late, early, sometimes not at all and always at the whim of the driver. A strange contradiction when they could be fresh off the assembly line with heating, AC and flat screen tvs.
Schedules change, with great notice, little notice or no notice. Usually I get word through the form of a text from my liaison. More often, through my own investigating with the students. Founding out when finals, holidays, summer vacation begins, is like trying to predict an earthquake. Ball-parked, is the best you can hope for. My Chinese colleagues, do not flinch at this. I still, STILL have trouble not believing that the school cannot know when the last day of classes will be. I hate that I have that feeling.
The trouble my students cause me in class has lead me to drop expletives and slam down books. I've walked out, kicked students out, made them do push-ups and lost my temper. I get better at handling it each day. It pays to laugh, it pays to not take it seriously, it pays to keep them occupied, it pays to know Chinese (which at the very least will get you a welcome round of applause). It DEFINITELY pays to be prepared.
For now, even though my internal monologue is a constant barrage of, "are you kidding me?", "how can you not understand what I am trying to tell you?", I passively wait, close my eyes and wait until one of the better students can encourage the others to be quiet.
In high school, I am fairly certain that I was partially to blame for two Spanish teachers leaving their jobs. My angst caused that, and I think it is all coming back to haunt me now. Proof that karma does exist.
I often wonder how this new found tolerance will affect me in America. Will I be ambivalent to minor distractions? Will other peoples inability to cope with them set me off or anger me? Yes, it will, it already has, as I have observed in my travel encounters with other Westerner's. I mean, when I spend my time slurping down street-fried noodles with chopsticks while walking into on-coming traffic, how can I be upset when the waiter brings me the wrong dish.
It's just China. It has no explanation. It is a land of contradictions and confusion. My words cannot do it justice. There are highs, that are really high, and the lows that are really low.
It's all like Class #85. Confused, comical, chaotic, splendid, tiresome, delightful. The only thing it never is, is boring.
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