Jacking Off

So I realized that I haven’t really discussed the largest part of what I do here.

You can now gently remove your mind from the gutter…I’m talking about teaching.

I teach roughly 187 students, which is about 10 classes a week, conversational

English as an assistant to my teaching partner. At least that is what it says in my contract. In reality I teach them everything. I teach grammar, pronunciation, writing, American culture and public speaking…and I pretty much do it alone. Although my co-teacher is usually in the room, she is often swamped with administrative work since she speaks the best English at the school. As a result, she has taken my presence here as leave to do everything for the school BUT teach her classes. So all of the lesson planning, material purchasing and classroom management falls to me.

This, of course gives me a great deal of freedom concerning what I want to cover in class, which is awesome. I taught a pretty great lesson on Halloween a few weeks ago where we read together, watched movies, learned the “monster mash” dance, did vocabulary crosswords and trick-or-treated in class.  However it also means that when a group of young girls approach my desk and ask “ what does the American phrase ‘ to jack off’ mean?” …I have to figure out how to field a response on my own. I, assuming they would just Google it later, opted for the truth which then meant that I had to deal with 6 really embarrassed girls afterwards.  Or better yet, how do you respond when a 15 year old boy asks, “ Why do all Americans hate Muslims”?  At least I don’t have to deal with students being possessed by ghosts in class. And yes, this has happened in the classrooms of some of my friends.

Often, while in the process of teaching, I think to myself that I have absolutely NO idea what I’m doing. Which, of course I don’t. I didn’t major in education, I wasn’t trained in how to teach English as a second language and the 4 weeks of classes I sat through in Bandung hardly count as training.  And let’s be honest here, who really knows grammar? Who can actually quote rules and explain to 32 eager minds why certain pronouns are used one way and not another?
I don’t.
So now I’ve taken to studying my big book of grammar rules each day, so I can stop blatantly lying to my classes. Yet somehow, someway everyone walks out of my classroom, daily, unscathed and presumably a little smarter. And although I’m developing lines in my face that will have to be botoxed later and I probably sweat out half of  my body weight daily due to my schools distinct lack of air-conditioning…I’m teaching. Which is pretty cool.