Coffee Helps

I have managed to end up with a learning difficulties class. I think that’s the PC term. We’re not very PC here (hooray!), so mostly we tend to refer to them as “the slow class” (me) or “the stupid class” (their Korean English teacher).

From what I can tell, they are simply being passed around the school from one teacher to the next, in the hope that one day someone will be able to work miracles with them. And time after time, the teacher throws his or her hands in the air and begs for them to be given to someone else. They are elementary school children. The elementary pupils don’t belong to this school (it’s for 5-7 year olds), but they come in for English lessons  in the afternoons when our younger pupils have gone home. I have two small classes, which I teach three times each per week, and I really enjoy them. But then there’s this other class… oh, heaven have mercy.  I only have them once a week, but that one 50-minute slot feels like a very long and painful lifetime.

I’m turning out to be quite a good teacher, to my delighted surprise. I’m creative, so I can come up with lots of ways to keep the lessons interesting and fun. I’m passionate about spelling and grammar, so find them easy to teach and explain. I’m a bit childlike and, erm, childish, so I can easily get inside their heads and think like they do – which really, really helps. But at 2.50pm every Thursday, you will find me sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, or staring blankly at the wall, wondering if I am, in fact, the worst English teacher in the whole world. Clare has taken to coming in when she sees the kids leaving, partly out of morbid curiosity and partly to check that I haven’t jumped out of the window.

I have spent three weeks in a row trying to teach them the “wh” questions. You really have no idea how hard I have tried. There have been games, pictures, visual aids, rewards, books, diagrams, lists, songs, the full works. Three weeks! My kindergarten classes would scoff at the idea of spending more than five minutes on such a trifling matter. And still this class stares blankly at me every time I check to see if they’ve got it yet.

It gets to the stage when I actually have the answers sitting right in front of them, and still they can’t get it. Like a sentence cut into four parts and labelled. Allow me to demonstrate:

David —— went swimming —— at the pool —— on Sunday.

WHO ———— WHAT —————- WHERE ———- WHEN

There will be arrows, there will be colour coding, there will be squares and circles drawn around words, there will be lines connecting the “wh”s to the sentence parts. Who went swimming? David went swimming! Who? David! What did David do? David went swimming! What? Went swimming! I chant over and over again, pointing at the words on the board, pointing them out to each individual child in their books. Yet no matter how hard I try, they continue to have no idea what I’m trying to show them. Who went swimming at the pool on Sunday? I ask for the millionth time. Blank stares. Who went swimming? I try to simplify it. Blank stares. Who… WHO! Who went swimming? I ask, desperation sneaking into my voice. No reply. I will give you a candy if you get it right, I say finally, selling my soul to the devil and waving a sweet to give them the idea. They sit bolt upright and stare earnestly at their books. Now, I ask hopefully, who went swimming?

On Sunday! cries one child. Seeing my incredulous expression, another one pipes up: at the pool! I see where this is going. I will not give out sweets for arriving at the right answer via a series of complete guesses. And so we begin again.

It is soul-destroying. I went into the classroom of Kerry, their Korean English teacher, last week after a class that pretty much ended with them hating me and me hating them. No English whatsoever had been learned. In fact, I might actually have lost some of my own abilities.

Kerry, I am going crazy! I wailed, slumping down in front of her desk. She recognised my expression at once. Ahh… stupid class, yes?! Ah, these children, they are so stupid! She gave me some soothing green tea and we discussed our plight for a while. I drew her attention to the fact that it’s impossible for me to teach them anything – even if they will never learn English, at least she can try to explain things to them in their own language. I got nuthin’.

But I refuse to give up. I do not like to quit just because something is hard. I’m stubborn like that. I’m determined to be the teacher who finally manages to teach them. They will become English speakers if it kills me. And let’s face it, if it doesn’t kill me, it will probably cause me to lose my mind…