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9.23.2005 ||> And another depressing thought
Hello, dear Miss S.I still get letters from a couple of my students. They were all students that I had in Tashkent, and are from one of two classes that I taught. Why do I mention this? Well, going to the Blackboard Jungle is always a good reality check. Lectrice tells the story of two teachers that she has come across. The former is someone who went on a glorified vacation to Latin America to go teach without even knowing the language. With virtually no training, she paid money out of her own pocket for books and supplies. She tried to teach 31 students of varied ability who could not retain or research information.
How are you? The first thing, I'd want to do is to congratulate you with your Birthday! Be happy and just enjoy this day. I wish you happiness and rich, good friends, clever students and many happy returns of the day. I want you to know, that you are the best English teacher, I have ever had. Of course, Mrs. O is a good teacher, but I don't like her lessons, because they are simply uninteresting. And of cause she is not so good as you are. I don't want to say something bad about Mrs. O behind her back, but you simply are THE BEST. I'm so unhappy now because I've lost such a good English teacher, yes, you can say, that now I can write you letters, but it's not the same as to talk to you face to face. I miss you very much.
The whole plan was a failure.
This is why I couldn't stay as a teacher. Beyond the frustration at teenagers acting like teenagers or all the work I was putting in with no result, one thought kept me awake at night. This is these kids' lives. I will be going home in 2 years, but this might be 2 years of education they'll never get back. That's what I felt when I saw teachers and other volunteers going to class still drunk from the night before, or when I saw that I wasn't making any discernible different in the student' grammar. I was scared as hell everyday that these kids were wasting time better spent learning something worthwhile. They needed the Daras of the Peace Corps, the people that knew how to teach going in.
I don't have an easy answer to these quandaries, and it is still something I struggle with. Sometimes, I let the letters console me, but sometimes I also feel like a fraud.
0 snow blossoms
