A Moi Sun Sun Hong Mao...

I live only a ten minute drive from the school, which sounds awesome…but in reality it means I think I can hit the snooze button over and over until I finally realise it’s 8am and I have half an hour to get washed, dressed and in my car, not forgetting my folder full of lesson plans, worksheets, past work and other endless reams of paper. So I shovel the frosted wheats into my mouth while drying my hair and watching BBC News, sling the bowl into the sink (I can wash up later), and dash out the front door into the sunshine.

I returned from travelling in January, and slotted straight back into work at my TEFL school on the “sunny” east coast of England. Sometimes it’s sunny. Most of the time it isn’t, and I have to navigate the car park in order to find a parking space that doesn’t come with it’s own lake.

“Hi, Emmaaaa,” comes a small voice from my right. I know the voice immediately, and turn, smile, and attempt to wave while locking my car door and holding my paper. “Hi, Circle,” I reply, before dashing into the hubbub of the staffroom.

Our school is based in an English state school, which means we get lots of English students trying to chat up the Spanish students until July, when they all head on holiday to…well, probably Spain. And we also get a tiny little staffroom, and have to try to cram about eleven teachers around the kettle, the photocopier and the notice board fifteen minutes before class. ‘Good Morning’s are hollered all round, with a string of “Oh, for God’s sakes, is it broken again?”s and “Is this communal milk?”s.

“Oh, hello, hello, ummm…Emma?” greets the Director of Studies, a kind but very strange sort of man who I half believe has the Expedia cloud in place of a brain. “Oh, hi,” I reply quickly, smiling but rummaging in the cupboard for new board markers. “Do any of these work?” I call to nobody in particular, and answer myself by doodling on the board.

“Ahhhh, Emmaaaa,” comes another familiar voice in the crowd. “You awwraight, mate?”

Vitorino, or Vic as he is more lovingly known, has been working at the school for two years after coming as a student from Macau. Now he lives with a host family, acts as a group leader for the new Macau students and brightens up our days and evenings by saying wholly inappropriate things in the best and worst of situations. He’s taught all of us the bad words in Cantonese, and none of the useful ones. And he looks like a cuddly panda, a “moi sun sun hong mao“, in Cantonese. I smile back at him, ask if he’s okay, and sneakily slide in front of the photocopier and copy a home-made worksheet about local myths and legends- my signature lesson.

“Whaa you teaching today, mate?” Vic asks, and I reply- “Myths and Legends again-foolproof.”

“Okay,” interrupts the DoS. “Can we please, possibly….maybe…uhmm…I think it’s time to rendezvous…rendezvous, what a lovely term, yes….rendezvous with the students, please?”

His cryptic message has a small effect on the teachers, who slowly gather their bags, sheets and cups of tea and coffee, and make their way to the classrooms.

　

“Hiii, Emma,” greet the happy, albeit tired, faces of my students. “Hi, guys,” I reply, placing my belongings down. “Carlos, please put Alejandro down, I know you love him very much but that’s what the disco is for…okay, do I have Alba? Yes. Frederic? Yes..” And I reel off the lists of the German, Swiss, Luxembourg, French, Spanish, Basque (don’t call them Spanish), and Canary Islands children who make up my class of sixteen. All present, correct, and awaiting my wisdom….right…

“Okay, so, myths, legends and mysteries….what are they?” I ask, drawing a mind map on the board. “I am a legend!” calls Carlos, and I nod, grinning. “Of course, Carlos, as am I…”

The morning class goes relatively quickly, and almost entirely to my lesson plan. Mind map myths, legends and mysteries. Listen to the Lowestoft Witches information, answer the questions. Extra information, discussion. Read Black Shuck, write police report for your sighting. Feedback. Discussion. Talk about Johnny Depp with the girls…Sweeney Todd fill-in-the-verb sheet. Find verbs in dictionary. Break! Jack The Ripper be-the-detective sheet.

The fun comes at the end of the class.

“Okay, if we have Alba, Carlos and Laura in team one…” I dictate, pointing vaguely at students and to areas of the classroom as I divide them into four teams. “Now, we’re going to make a newspaper. I need team one to make the front page, so what do we need? Headline, yes…what’s the most important of the stories? Jack The Ripper? Okay, he’s the front page…”

Team two create an interview with Sweeney Todd, Team three, a feature on Black Shuck and Jaguars in the area, and Team four, the sports page- Lowestoft Witches at a football match?

“What do we call the newspaper, guys?” I ask, and within a millisecond Carlos calls out his catchphrase- “Oh my God!”. I laugh, and nod. “Of course, why did I even ask….”

By lunchtime, the class have created a colourful, funny, if interesting newspaper and I am dumbfounded. One of the best classes I’ve ever taught, by far. Sometimes it’s hard to get the French to sit with the Germans, or the Basques to even talk to the Spanish, but the personalities of the class have blended so well together that I hardly ever have to tell them to speak in English, or even to “stop calling the Basques those names…”. The only thing I do have to do is correct the usage of the word ‘boner’-(“It’s I have a boner, not I am a boner, Alejandro…”).

“Okay, fantastic work, guys! I’m very impressed. Oh, I like the picture of Jack The Ripper…these are going on the staffroom wall. Right, rubbish in the bin, chairs tucked in, windows closed, and lunchtime!”

“Emma, will we have you next week?” a few students ask. I umm and ahh. “I’m not sure, you may have another teacher because-”

“Oh, but we want you!” they squeal. I do an inward high five.

On Wednesdays, students have excursions in the afternoon, and more often than not I take them. Country houses, Norwich city, sea life centre, I’ve spent half my TEFL life telling kids who was beheaded or hung where, and showing them where all the ghost stories are. After all, what fifteen year old cares about the civil war unless someone had their guts pulled out?

But today was a Monday, and that meant…Chinese.

By Chinese, I mean Macau. Part of our English school brings children from Macau and prepares them for education in English schools at GCSE and A-Level. In my class, I had two students going on to state schools in September, and I had been asked to give them ‘social skills’. Vic, the group leader, is 21, has studied with us for two years and lived in Britain for two, and he still doesn’t understand that asking a girl if she’s a virgin is not a good way of getting a girlfriend. So I had my work cut out. The Macau students are a different kettle of fish when it comes to teaching. Part of their culture and education means they find it hard to form opinions, so my usual lessons of Human Rights and Animal Rights or Crime and Justice don’t work.

“Okay, so I’m doing different cultures. A little discussion, reading information, using their dictionary computer things to find out about different cultures, looking at pictures…A-Z of mind maps to describe places, then the climax.. making a leaflet advertising holidays in different cultures. Sound good?”

Rob, Assistant Director of Studies and partner in crime nods, his fingers steepled in front of him. “Yeah, we can tag-team the Chinese next week.…did you know Nicolas and Audrey ‘jiggly jigglied‘?”

My eyes go wide and I park up at the table. “No way! I thought Nicolas was gay…”

“Yeah, me too. Well, maybe he is, he just thought, another country and all that…”

The grapevine in our school is terrible. Not only do we gossip about each other, but the group leaders and the students. Not in a bad way, but in a “oh, did you hear about so-and-so and what’s-her-name?” And when you have several people coming together in a foreign land, it’s a hot bed for hot hear’ say. The kettle boiled, and I dashed into the kitchenette to prepare my couscous. “You know, I thought after last years shenanigans that this year was going to be pretty tame.”

Rob swallowed his paella sandwich (why?) and shook his head. “There’s always gossip in this place…Apparently Vic asked Sophie to be his girlfriend again last week.”

I sigh. I needn’t say anymore.

“Emmaaaa, do we have you?” ask a handful of Chinese faces as I push past them to the classroom door. “Yes, the classes have changed a little,” I explain, shoving the door open and sliding my things onto the desk. “Come in, guys, can we move the tables again, please?”

After a small prod and a lot of motioning, my nine students move the tables into a horseshoe and take their seats.

It’s taken fifteen minutes.

I sigh again.

I do a lot of sighing with the Macaus.

I begin my lesson simply. A warm-up game, and they answer a few questions about their weekend.

“Where did you visit, guys?”

“Weee…wen’ to Cambridge,” one replies, after a long silence. I nod. “Cool, was it good? Bad?”

“It was good, very beautiful,” replies Marcelo, the most fluent of the speakers. I nod again. “It is, yes. Simon,” I turn to face one of the boys, strong but easily distracted. “What did you do in free time?”

“Uhhh, I wen’….shop-ping,” he replies, all emphasis on the PING. “I go’ a jack…jacket.”

“Very nice…” I rub the board clean. And the lesson begins again. A-Z of adjectives, yes a place can be charming, but no it can’t really be described as handsome. We practise reading and speaking, each student reading about American culture. “Pronounce your t, your b, your d…wen-TUH. Walk-DUH. It’s there, but I can’t hear it. English ears listen for the end to know what you mean, walk or walked? Is it now or then, present or past…”

I set them a task- using the adjectives from the A-Z, describe America. One phrase comes up with every student. “Racist.”. This is another thing with the Macaus. They’ve been taught that America and Europe is full of white people, and we’re all supremacist who hate other races. “New York is full of different cultures,” I explain. “Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian…that’s why they have so much great food, and places like Chinatown and Little Italy.”

The students nod quietly. I’m not sure they fully understand, but then I never am with the Chinese.

They create their leaflets, the ‘South Africa’ group drawing a detailed diagram of an African- possibly racist in our culture, but only naïve, innocent observation from them. A beautiful Brazil leaflet is created by Circle, a girl who is lively and colourful and reflects this in her work. ‘The rainforest is the sight of Brazil…’ it says, next to a picture of the jungle. ‘The Jesus Christ is very famous…’ and a picture of the statue. Cuba leaflets and Holland posters fly in, zealously illustrated if the words aren’t 100%. I collect the writing from each student, and my doubts about White Supremacy are answered- all have described Britain as “multi-cultural…with white, yellow, black and brown people…”.

I smile as the students wave goodbye, and I wish them a goodtime at the disco. One tells me that Fai has a French girlfriend, too. At the social evening, I see the Macaus talking to the Germans about the football tournament, the Spanish and the Basques playing Jenga, and the Luxembourgish talking in their five fluent languages to everyone.

It seems, as little as the job may pay, as stressful as the days may be, as long and tiring as it may become working 9am until 9pm some days, we are, in some kind of way, creating peace between the different cultures of the world. Sowing the seeds, and all that.

• Day In The Life