Teaching – 10/19/14

                I’ve heard my whole life that teaching is hard and I always thought that I had a pretty good handle on what that meant: kids not listening, hours of work grading/planning, etc. Additionally, I tutored a good deal in high school and thought I had a feel for what teaching is like. The truth of the matter is that you really can’t know what it’s like to be a teacher until you’re thrown into a classroom and start teaching.

                The first week at the South Point School has been a whirlwind. I found out on Tuesday that I was teaching 3^rd graders English and 5^th, 6^th, 7^th, and 12^th graders math and then started classes Wednesday (the very next day). Sure, 13 years of schooling prepares you a little bit for being a teacher – after all I remember the teachers/teaching methods I enjoyed/found effective – but so much of teaching happens behind the scenes and I am woefully underprepared when it comes to teacher preparation. What the heck does a class plan even look like? How do you make/keep to a schedule to fit all of the necessary topics in before the end of the year? When should there be quizzes? tests? projects? And to top it off I have to do some of it in a language I just started learning a month and a half ago (the school is technically an English-medium school, but 3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders just don’t know that much English). Not to mention the fact that midway through the third day with my 12^th graders I learned that I have to prepare them for the Indian equivalent of an AP exam by the end of February (except in India the test holds even more weight because college acceptance is based completely on exam scores).

                It’s a lot to take in, especially with such little guidance from anyone at the school. Part of my stress comes from the sheer difference between classroom environments at South Point and those back home. This point relates most directly to my math classes, although I am sure I could find traces of this same theme in my 3^rd grade class as well. Anyway, at the school children are encouraged to learn at their own pace – something that in theory I am not opposed to in the slightest (I was a tutor for years. I get the need of kids to learn at different speeds) – but the way in which this policy manifests itself in the school is so incredibly foreign to me. Basically, each kid teaches himself/herself out of the textbook and asks the teacher whenever he/she encounters a topic with which they struggle. This a) makes kids who are all in the same class be on multiple different sections, heck, chapters, b) allows students who don’t want to learn math to not learn any math, c) makes the teacher explain the exact same problem 10 different times to 10 different kids, and d) fosters an environment in which those who are struggling get left even further behind.

                After the first half week of working I had pretty much decided that after the next unit test in my seventh grade class I would have formal lessons and keep the kids on relatively the same page. During a conversation over lunch I brought up my plan to another teacher and she was shocked by the proposition – how could you make a class learn things together when some kids will inherently pick it up faster and others slower? Said teacher went on to describe that the current system functions the way it does because of lack of incentives/disincentives. At least in my school back home, if you were disruptive in the class you were sent outside or called to the principal’s office or assigned detention or given a lower grade or had your parents called. Here, the school has a policy that forbids sending kids out of class or to the office and it completely lacks any sort of detention system. Grades hardly matter when it comes to progressing to the next grade level and many/most parents just don’t care how their kids are performing in school. How, then, are you supposed to convince kids that they need to sit down and be quiet in class to learn?

                The answer to this question is externally incredibly easy: gain the students’ respect and trust. If students respect a teacher, they will jump through the most ridiculous hoops to please them (I know I did for those teachers who gained my respect in high school). BYP students from past years have left notes that the most important thing they developed while working at the South Point School was relationships with the students. Sammy (BYP 2013-2014) very astutely wrote in his advice to future BYP teachers that the most effective way to discipline students was to first get to know them outside of class and then use this familiarity to call out kids when they were being disruptive. The immediate problem with this solution is time – so far I have not had the time to spend time with students during lunch or breaks to talk to them and learn about their lives/circumstances (I haven’t even taught 5 days yet for goodness’ sake). Additionally, the language barrier (and current state of my half-deaf right ear) inhibits my ability to talk to the kids. Sure, I can play games with them and say “Hello! How are you?” just fine, but I still feel like I’m not being as effective as I could be in my exchanges with them. Again, the remedy to this concern is time: time learning Hindi, time becoming less of a stranger to the students, and time talking/interacting with everyone. I just wish I could be a better teacher now.

                Another concern in the back of my head is just my capability to effectively teach the subjects that have been chosen for me. Yeah, I technically know all the math that the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th graders are learning, I just have very little recollection of how that information was initially taught to me (how are you supposed to explain why you find the area of a rectangle the way you do without bringing in even more complicated math?). Even harder, I know English and English grammar well enough (even if you can’t tell from the haphazardness of the grammar in my blogs, oops lolz), but I have no idea how to teach it to someone else, especially to a 3^rd grader who doesn’t understand 90% of what I say anyway. I know I’ll figure it out soon enough, but this is more just an open invitation to all of the teachers who may or may not be reading my blogs to give me any sort of guidance.

                All of this rather pessimistic writing isn’t meant to be pessimistic. I’ve had a blast the past week starting to get to know my students – the good ones I can count on and the devilish ones I have to look out for – and getting my feet under mean as far as what I should be doing in class every day. It’s been exhausting and I swear that the 8 hours I get of sleep a night are somehow transformed into a mere 4 hours. Teaching, planning for teaching, Hindi class, and doing Hindi homework feel like the only things I do besides eat and sleep at the moment, but the busy rhythm is also strangely nice. Besides, I have weekends to hangout and recharge and spend more quality time wreaking havoc with my host brother Deep.