running uphill, fast

Imagine you have never been on a treadmill before. You have seen other people use them and have a pretty good idea how they work, and you're interested to try. However, you can't really gingerly get onto a full-speed-ahead running machine, so you jump on and hope you can cut the pace. So far, so good - it's exhausting but you're figuring out how to save energy while running, and your form is improving. Then along comes a trainer, and pushes the little up arrow next to "speed." Before you know it, you're speeding along faster than before, which is tiring - but hey, you're ready for it now, right?

As soon as you've gotten your bearings at this new speed, another fitness trainer comes along. This time she messes with the incline, and soon you are running uphill, faster than you have ever run. And each time you get accustomed to this new pace, another trainer comes along to nudge the up arrow. "You can do it," you tell yourself, as you try not to think about how fast or steeply uphill you are running, or how out of breath you have become. And you warily look around for the trainers who will come up with a new challenge - wondering when the increase in difficulty will cross the line between manageable and just too strenuous to keep up.

This is my treadmill of teaching English at the ISS. Every day presents a new challenge: attendance sheets, new homework and testing requirements, progress charts in Chinese, rules for classroom decoration and cleaning, additional 3-period-a-week classes, meeting and projects for individual students, judging speech competitions, formatting lesson plans, regular evaluations of both teachers and students, IELTS practice standards, rules for when teachers must be outside and inside the classrooms, where classroom keys are kept, rituals for beginning and ending classes, discipline procedures, even rules governing the use of printers and copiers.

This week has abnormally quickened my treadmill pace, due to two new ingredients of stress:

1. Kung fu practice, or "how to take the fun out of just about anything"

First, after watching us practice last Friday and deciding we weren't good enough, the school headmaster, Alan, decided that all the teachers need to practice the kung fu dance every night this week for an hour. Besides adding an extra couple hours to my already long workday, his presence in the room during our practice has changed the entire dynamic of the dance. On Monday, after going through the dance a couple times, he reorganized our line-up by skill level - with the exception of putting me in the front row; guess my whiteness supersedes my awful kung fu dance ability - and then gave us a long speech in Chinese.

I couldn't really understand most of what he was saying, but judging by the downcast eyes of the other teachers and their very solemn return to the dance floor, I don't think it was utmost praise. After his speech, he approached me with a huge plastic smile and said, "Did you understand? I just said, everyone who does not yet know the dance needs to stay after practice." Needless to say, no one left.

Normally I could care less about people watching me dance. But when the male teachers left the floor, and I was left in the front row, I could feel Alan's eyes on me and I just started to crack. I can't explain it any other way, except that I realized I was sweating and actually trembling, and suddenly came to the realization - if I don't get off this floor right now, I am going to cry. Cry I did not, but get off the dance floor I did... And cowered next to the piano with my tail between my legs. Conclusion: I definitely am not quite 91% Chinese.

Since then, the dance has become fun again - I think everyone went home and practiced on Monday night, so by Tuesday we looked much better. Alan was excited about our new abilities, so I guess his seriousness was effective. Also Jaris's added sound effects to our kicks and punches cracked everyone up - even Alan. I am going to practice again as soon as I finish this blog entry, and am hoping the tone from Tuesday continues tonight...

2. Blood and plexiglass: English Corner adventures

My other treadmill-speeding incident occurred yesterday afternoon. Well, actually it began last week, when one of the foreign teachers at the LC (Allaina - check out the Yangshuo/Guilin entry from Sept if you'd like a refresher) got fired because two students got in a fight in her class. I know little about it except that one of the students was bleeding, and his parents were critical of Allaina's treatment of the situation. It was a real wake-up call; kids get rowdy and out of hand pretty regularly, and even the LC director admitted it "could have happened to anybody." But when parents get involved, it leaves little recourse for the school.

So maybe that adequately foreshadows what happened in my class on Tuesday. Basically, five minutes into class, one of my chronically out-of-control, refusing-to-speak-English, 7th-9th grade students ran to the front of the room while I was writing on the board. She reached/leaned/jumped across my desk to get a pen, and on the way managed to shatter the plexiglass covering my computer monitor as well as cut open her finger.

I don't remember what I yelled, but it must have been pretty loud because Jaris came running over from his classroom next door ("ready to lay the smack down," he told me later) and watched my students while I stormed upstairs to get someone with more power and authority. I found the 3 bigshots in our school all in a meeting, which I interrupted with the words, "I have a serious problem in my classroom."

For the first time, I am incredibly glad to be in the ISS and not the LC. I've been somewhat envious of the LCers, since it is less work, less formal, less time commitment. But the ISS is a real school, where the administrative staff interacts regularly with teachers and has personal relationships with almost every student. So I didn't get fired; on the contrary, after I sent my "Incident Report" to Sissy, she approached me to make sure I was okay, and also to let me know that I should expect a formal apology from my problem student. So maybe the incident made me cry for about an hour and drink two Belgian beers, and I would still include it on a list of stressors, but it also made me thankful for being in a school with staff who actually support the teachers.

* * * * *

And yet even as my treadmill sometimes seems to be reaching the breaking point where I must get off or collapse, there are always moments - feeling little arms hugging my legs and turning around to find Coco behind me; reading an argumentative essay on why it is better to go to school than live on the street because "if I live on the street I could not see beautiful teacher Amber"; watching my Year 2 students dominate a difficult test and realizing hey, I taught them all of that. So yeah, the treadmill is moving quickly... But it can't be all bad if there are moments I forget I am on it.