In the land of ESL, you have to be prepared for anything. You especially have to be ready to recast speech, speech that is said by a student, but needs correcting because the idea isn't understood. I do this all the time. On this particular day, I thought it was more of the same...boy, was I wrong!
Two weeks into our second semester, a male student came up to me after class. He said "I want to buy girl." Oh, I said, you want to buy something for a girl, sure, what do you think would be nice to buy a girl? He scowled at me, "No, I want to buy girl." I nodded my head smiling, "Sure, you want to buy something for a girl, I understand." "No", he said sternly. " I want girl for sex."
"Where can I buy girl."
Now, it hadn't hit me that a young man would actually have the courage to come up to a female professor and actually ask her where he could "buy" girl. It also hadn't hit me that a student would feel so comfortable with me in class that he felt he could ask me such a question. After I realized what he just asked for, I could feel my face change. It started twisting and my eyebrows quickly had knit themselves together. I took on a different voice. "I am going to answer your question with two statments, " I said calmly "First, men do not buy women, it is against the law here, and if you try to "buy" a woman for sex, you will be arrested and sent home." I gasped for air, "Second, I am a professor, I am also a feminist, I am against this behavior because it harms women and it treats women like animals, we are not animals, we are humans, with rights." I stopped talking, glaring at him. He calmly looked at me and said " OK!" he turned around, grabbed his bag and out the door he went.
It took me several weeks to figure this out, but my analysis of this whole sorrid story came to this; There is a line in each classroom and culture defines that line, where it is, and why you should not cross it. Foreign students in American classrooms do not know where that line is. A smiling, warm, teacher is enough to throw this whole idea into disarray. Students have no idea what they should or should not say and how they should or should not act. It's like walking through a penny candy store with a trash bag and no clerk to take your money! Whatever these students feel like doing, they do it!
I realized that I was in the land of no boundries and I would have to set them, something I wasn't entirely ready to do yet at this level. However, if it meant saving some young Chinese man from trying to buy girl, it's on!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
I have no idea what you just said!
It had come to my attention that after one semester of teaching that I was no longer a teacher. I was a councilor, a keeper of secrets, a clown, a pleading being, a giant pair of ears, a social worker, a housing advocate, a cultural Dr. Phil, Oprah (but without the money and the fame), a storyteller, a perplexed Bostonian trying to explain our bizarre behavior, and an eternal optimist.
After Valetudinarian changed his name to Miles, it became quite clear that he was....unusual.
He was rather odd, showing up to class very early, sitting at attention, looking straight ahead, as if there were some mind altering abyss to peer into. He was very formal, always greeting me and always looking off into the distance.
Our second week had started and true to form, I had the students grouped and engaged in work that they would present at the end of class. Miles would sit on the outside and peer into the group he was suppose to be involved in. When asked to join in, he stood up and starting yelling in Chinese at the girl who merely asked for his participation. Immediately, my student who had been shouted at, got up, screamed at him and bolted into the restroom.
I just stood there. What the *#! just happened? No teaching seminar, no amount of graduate training can prepare you for this. I gave the class the mandate to carry on and told Miles to sit down and keep his trap shut! I raced out the door to find my student in the girls room crying her heart out. She interpreted his remarks and now I understood why she reacted in such an explosive manner. He had told her that she was stupid, silly and had no business telling him what to do. I was stunned. So, I grabbed the verbal bull by the horn and talked her into coming back to class. I would deal with Miles! Her eyes glistened at the thought of Miles getting his! Oh, did I mention that I had to be a psychologist as well?
She believed me, she calmed down, she followed me back to class. She opened the door and raced back to her group. I asked to see Miles out in the hallway. You could hear the crickets, I swear to god! I took him in another room and ripped into him. He tried to stick up for himself, but thanks to my inablity to tolerate injustice, I shut him down.
I went back to the office that day stunned that this kind of behavior could take place in MY classroom! After I dragged myself into the office and threw myself down into the chair, I spilled my guts to my colleague. Ah, colleagues! What would the world be without them! She had more experience with Asian culture than I did. After she heard about the incident, she filled me in on the very real world of intimidation, bullying and harrassment within this culture and told me that I was in for more of this, as many of my students felt it was perfectly fine to behave in this fashion while in class. Huh? Why did they feel this kind of behavior was acceptable? The answer was simple.
There is a line in a classroom and most American students know not to cross it. What I was experiencing was a lineless classroom. These students did not know where the line was! A friendly, warm, smiling teacher meant that you can do and say anything without any kind of repercussions!
Looking back on this, this was the day I developed my Jean Claude Van Dam teaching persona!
After Valetudinarian changed his name to Miles, it became quite clear that he was....unusual.
He was rather odd, showing up to class very early, sitting at attention, looking straight ahead, as if there were some mind altering abyss to peer into. He was very formal, always greeting me and always looking off into the distance.
Our second week had started and true to form, I had the students grouped and engaged in work that they would present at the end of class. Miles would sit on the outside and peer into the group he was suppose to be involved in. When asked to join in, he stood up and starting yelling in Chinese at the girl who merely asked for his participation. Immediately, my student who had been shouted at, got up, screamed at him and bolted into the restroom.
I just stood there. What the *#! just happened? No teaching seminar, no amount of graduate training can prepare you for this. I gave the class the mandate to carry on and told Miles to sit down and keep his trap shut! I raced out the door to find my student in the girls room crying her heart out. She interpreted his remarks and now I understood why she reacted in such an explosive manner. He had told her that she was stupid, silly and had no business telling him what to do. I was stunned. So, I grabbed the verbal bull by the horn and talked her into coming back to class. I would deal with Miles! Her eyes glistened at the thought of Miles getting his! Oh, did I mention that I had to be a psychologist as well?
She believed me, she calmed down, she followed me back to class. She opened the door and raced back to her group. I asked to see Miles out in the hallway. You could hear the crickets, I swear to god! I took him in another room and ripped into him. He tried to stick up for himself, but thanks to my inablity to tolerate injustice, I shut him down.
I went back to the office that day stunned that this kind of behavior could take place in MY classroom! After I dragged myself into the office and threw myself down into the chair, I spilled my guts to my colleague. Ah, colleagues! What would the world be without them! She had more experience with Asian culture than I did. After she heard about the incident, she filled me in on the very real world of intimidation, bullying and harrassment within this culture and told me that I was in for more of this, as many of my students felt it was perfectly fine to behave in this fashion while in class. Huh? Why did they feel this kind of behavior was acceptable? The answer was simple.
There is a line in a classroom and most American students know not to cross it. What I was experiencing was a lineless classroom. These students did not know where the line was! A friendly, warm, smiling teacher meant that you can do and say anything without any kind of repercussions!
Looking back on this, this was the day I developed my Jean Claude Van Dam teaching persona!
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Summer Session Group 2
As the first semester came to an end, I looked forward to starting my second semester with the program, and true to form, it was not boring!
The first day of my first class, I had the students state their name, where they are from and what (if any) English name they have chosen. My first student, a rather dower looking individual lights up and says "My name is valetudinarian". I stopped dead in my tracks looked at him and said "I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?" He did. Six times. He told me he loved this word, it was his favorite GRE word and he wanted it to be his name.
I spent the next two days trying to convince him to change his name. After I found out that his favorite word valedudinarian meant a person of a weak or sickly constitution ( I had no clue what it meant) I really kicked into overdrive to get him to change his name. I used every excuse in the book, including the one that Americans will have no idea what it means, let alone actually be able to pronounce it! Finally, with sadness, after two days of cajoling, he changed his name. He was now Miles Dyson. I had to ask where he got that name, he told me off of a website that sells cleaners.
yup, we're off to a beautiful, predictable start.
The first day of my first class, I had the students state their name, where they are from and what (if any) English name they have chosen. My first student, a rather dower looking individual lights up and says "My name is valetudinarian". I stopped dead in my tracks looked at him and said "I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?" He did. Six times. He told me he loved this word, it was his favorite GRE word and he wanted it to be his name.
I spent the next two days trying to convince him to change his name. After I found out that his favorite word valedudinarian meant a person of a weak or sickly constitution ( I had no clue what it meant) I really kicked into overdrive to get him to change his name. I used every excuse in the book, including the one that Americans will have no idea what it means, let alone actually be able to pronounce it! Finally, with sadness, after two days of cajoling, he changed his name. He was now Miles Dyson. I had to ask where he got that name, he told me off of a website that sells cleaners.
yup, we're off to a beautiful, predictable start.
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