Buckland Weekly #9 - The Rough With The Smooth

You are going to have bad days.

It may sound obvious, but you are going to have bad days. You will get to school, find your classroom has changed, race around looking for the new room, arrive late and flustered, find the class who are usually sweet little angels have turned into uncontrollable demon spawn, have your carefully prepared lesson go down like a scary clown at a coulrophibic ten-year-old’s birthday party, miss the bus home in the pouring rain. You will go to bed cursing the day that you ever heard of China, let alone decided to come here.

But you’re going to forget something. You’re going to forget that you had days that were just as bad back home, days that started out terrible and raced downhill into a pit of gloom and doom. Think back, you know you did. The bad day isn’t because THIS IS CHINA. It’s because THIS IS LIFE.

What I do when that happens depends on the day. If it’s Friday I head for an ex-pat bar and drink with people who have all had similar bad days and we whine on drunkenly till the desire to whine has ended. But it isn’t always Friday. Sometimes you have to go to school tomorrow and turning up drunk is a huge no-no. Don’t do it. No matter how bad your day has been.

Instead think about this.

You are going to have good days.

It may sound obvious but you are going to have good days. You will get to school and find every bit of equipment in your classroom is working perfectly, arrive calm and composed, find the three troublemakers who always cause headaches are suddenly  keen and attentive – eager to chat to you in the corridor, have what you thought was an indifferent lesson go down better than if you had given everyone ice-cream. You will go to bed wondering why you didn’t come to China years ago and wondering if you will ever want to go home.

This is also not because THIS IS CHINA. It’s also because THIS IS LIFE.

Let me quote from Doctor Who.

“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things but vice-versa the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant”

Let me tell you some things that will also happen. I know they will happen because they have happened to me and virtually every other teacher I know – maybe not in the specifics but in the essence. Things that will make you happy.

You will have a kid who has never spoken before in your class answer one of your questions, perhaps shyly and quietly, but speaking for the first time.

You will have a kid that you don’t even remember race up to you in the street and call you by name and shout “hello” with a huge friendly grin.

You will get to the end of the year and kids you thought hated your lessons will want to hug you and shake your hand.

You will have a kid that you told off last week for some classroom problem come to your office with a note apologizing for their behavior.

You will have the kid who sits at the back, and who has been written off by every other teacher as someone who is doomed to failure, come and tell you in really poor English how much he loves your lesson.

You will get an email or  qq  from a kid with a random non-sequitur question, just because he or she wants to communicate but doesn't know what to say.

You well get a sudden, brilliant and totally unexpected question that begs for a long answer that you don’t have time to give – and you will give it anyway.

Of course there will be bad days. But always make a note of the good days. Always remember every little thing that suddenly lifted your spirits. Always think on the times you were just talking to the kids and they were talking to you, not teacher to student but just like normal people.

Remember the chorus of “hellos” that greeted you when you first entered your classroom. Remember every time a kid started a conversation with you and think how brave that actually is.

And don’t let the bad things spoil the good ones.

Before I ever came to China I worked eleven years summer school in England. There were good days and bad days there too. I wrote this short poem after one of the good days.

My Korean Statues

Day after day they sat,
My Korean statues,
Silent unmoving, inscrutable -
In , but not of, the class.
Grammar failed to move
My Korean statues.
Vocabulary proved unable
To lift them from their groove.

I tried everything to engage
My Korean statues
To rouse in them a love of lessons
To tempt them from their cage,
But nothing did the trick
With my Korean statues
They sat through every session
Unresponsive as a brick.

They reached the final day
My Korean statues
With no indication that they'd heard
A word I'd had to say.
Together then they came to me
My Korean statues
And on a card had put the words
"Your lessons make us happy."