Blast of Epiphanies!!

I am completely overwhelmed. Today was a napalm blast of epiphanies.

A week ago as I was walking home from class, a random student asked if he could talk to me (in English). I have been asked a few times the same request so I wasn't that surprised. As we talk he tells me his major in Chinese. Red flag!! (Heh, get it? China? Red flag?) It was a sign. PC told us to look for students who are Chinese majors to tutor us if we cannot find licensed teachers. I asked him if he would be my tutor and he accepted. Tonight was our first lesson.

I must preface this with a bit of personal disclosure - I am extremely hard on myself, especially when it comes to language learning. I forget to breathe, I beat myself up, my hands shake - the whole anxiety of it propels me to learn. My problem is that I know I am like this, but I know few people understand my process so I have even less patience with myself with new teachers. I want to be amazing at it right out of the gate. If I am not, or if they giggle or breathe a larger sigh than usual, I am even more pissed. That is exactly what happened. I was reading aloud a passage of pinyin when he began to giggle. I stopped and said, "Ok. I need some more patience from you. I know I suck, but I need you to not laugh at me."

His reaction was unexpected.

"I am not laughing at your ability. Whenever I thought that I could not learn English, my high school English teacher always said, 'Ofcourse you can! You speak very well. Look at Americans! They think they are number one, but they do not learn Chinese because it is so hard!'"

First lesson in humility learned. The rest of our time was very productive once I started to breathe again and see myself through his eyes. Silly American.

Second lesson.

I had my Junior writing class write me a mid-term reflection letter, letting me know how they are, how their other classes are, what I can do to improve as their teacher and what do they like about my class. I know many of my students put great pressure on themselves daily and I thought (again, silly American) that I could help them with stress management and teach them how to chill. All English majors take a ton of classes. My juniors take Writing, Oral English, English Literature, Advanced English, Foreign Economic Contracts, World Famous Plays, a second foreign language (French, German or Japanese) and finally Concepts of Chairman Mao...All in one semester.

Okay....Now why am I here again? I teach 18 hours to 200 students. I have 200 mid term papers waiting for me to grade and I feel impotent right now. Unable to even look at them, let alone grade them. Why am I here? Someone who has a problem with time management in a country where every minute of every day is dedicated to their studies. I took an early morning run Sunday through the campus. At 7 am. there are students standing in the middle of a field or sitting along the street reading, memorizing, reciting. When you ask students about their weekend, most of their time is spent in the library or in a quiet classroom studying. I have a sophomore Life Science major student who is very sweet to me helping me with my English, showing me books that she bought on how to improve her English vocabulary in order to do well on the GRE she plans to take TWO YEARS from now!!

Honestly, I am in waaay over my head, thinking that I can help these students. Again, life as a teacher - you learn more than your students. They will be teaching ME how to focus and use my time wisely. Compartmentalize. Suck it up and do it.

This is only the beginning of my third month teaching. I have two years of this. Waaaay over my head.

Plus! I was just asked to teach another class next semester. English Film Appreciation for English major freshmen. It would be once a week with 60 students. I told her I wanted to think about it and started to bend my sitemate's ear. We came to a brilliant compromise - we both teach it. He would take the first film and discuss it, I would take the next one, and we would work together prepping BOTH films. Our Department head liked the idea so much they increased the class size to 100.

Next semester I will be teaching 300 students. Just wanted to write it out loud. Whoa....

This is all good for me. I am awful at free time. I call it "duh time"for that is all I do - sit and drool and go cro-magnon.

So now..thanks to my kids and other random students, my schedule is much more rigid. Class time, badminton time, eating time, sleeping time, grading time, studying Chinese time.....ad nauseum.

Only 3 months!!! How will I survive two years of this? Honestly if I look at the horizon I convulse. I look at 15 min to an hour portions of the future.

How am I doing? Duh.....I have five more minutes of emailing and "freetime" before I go back to my Everest - mid term essays. Send supplies. I'm going in.....