I’m always nervous
about the first day of teaching. I choose to err on the side of over-preparing
rather than under-preparing. Therefore, on Monday night (Sept. 3), I spent hours revamping some
Powerpoints that my co-teacher, Thu, and my colleague, Amy, handed over to me
from their previous courses. I revised, edited, and added many visuals to make
sure my EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students were able to match
pictures to the words on the screen and my lecture. By the time 1AM rolled
around, I realized that I wouldn’t get a full-night’s sleep before my 7AM
class. (Okay, when do I ever get a full-night’s sleep?) I wanted to wake up at
5:45AM so I could get ready, eat breakfast, and get to my class early enough to
set up my computer and the seats.
A restless
night of sleep later (I had woken up on several occasions to me scratching my
mosquito bites), I woke up at 6:10 and rushed to get ready. I left my room by
6:51AM to get to my classroom by 6:55 (the benefits of leaving across the road
from school) to see my students trickling in. They had already crowded toward
the center of class and left no walking room in between them, and since I had
to tend to setting up my presentation, I let them continue. “Morning class!” I
greeted them, “Since I have to set up, we’ll get started in 10 minutes.”
Some of the
students nodded slightly, while others just stared at me. I repeated myself in
Vietnamese this time, and I saw their mouths curve to smiles – whether they
pitied my mediocre Vietnamese or genuinely appreciated the translation (or
both), I don’t know.
I walked to the end of the hall to
see that the room that had the key to the projector was locked. Oh, Vietnamese
time. (Quick explanation: typically in Vietnam, people tend to be late for
their engagements. Why? I don’t know, but it’s a culturally accepted phenomenon
– something we call “rubber time” as well.) Normally, in situations like these
in the U.S., I would panic, get upset, etc., but I instead brainstormed things to
do with the class until the room opened. Luckily, my other co-teacher, Nhi, had
arrived and helped me with the whole situation.
Long story short, 20 minutes later,
we were ready to begin. About 30 students were present – all third-year college
students, and all young womyn. Apparently, the heavy rain, the return from the
holiday, and the complications with registration kept the other 40 students I
was supposed to have present from attending the class. However, I worked with
it. Nhi started us with the “Name Pantomime,” where students came up with
actions that matched their name (ex: mine was “Dancing Giang” while I did the
cabbage-patch). The students interacted, but were too shy to do the action.
After that and a quick logistical overview of the course, we talked in pairs
about their names, ages, families, hometown, hobbies, and things they liked
about American Culture. That went over very well, and they enjoyed standing and
seeing what their classmates also identified with.
However, the harder part of each
lecture I’ve had so far (three) was the part about introducing American
Culture. I had tried to cover too much ground about what America was and
wasn’t. I tried to explain that America was a heterogeneous culture, but I used
too many different vocabulary words, and I went on too many tangents. I had
idealized that I would be teaching a college course, which meant -- under American standards – that I would
lecture, and the students would occasionally participate. This is not the case
in Viet Nam – at least not in Hue University: College of Foreign Languages. The
students have minimal exposure to English outside of the school, so their
fluency is still relatively low. I instead need to teach my students about
concepts the way I would my fifth graders – points simplified and constantly
repeated, with many visuals, and much engagement and participation. This, I
will be sure to change for my last intro lecture on Friday.
Overall though, it was a good first
day. I made sure to bust out my Vietnamese vocabulary every now and then to
grab their attention (much like I would with Spanish with my students back at
Cassell), and the students genuinely liked it.
After my first class was over
(8:50AM), I came back to my room and wrote in my teacher journal to reflect on
what went well and what I needed to improve for my 1PM class, which would be
the same lecture, just different students. Then, I went to get lunch with Amy
and her student-friends that we made last year. Steven, Jenelle (other new
English teachers) and I were invited over to their room, where they cooked (I
kid you not) a five-course meal with rice using just one burner in their room. We
had rau hen (spinach fried with garlic with Hue mussels), canh ca chua (sour
soup with fish), thit heo (pork), nem ran (fried spring rolls), and tofu. As I
hear it, students who live in the dorms typically make their own meals
everyday. Amazing! I wish I could cook like them! The students were so
friendly, and we all enjoyed the food over English-Vietnamese conversations.
I left lunch a bit early to get
ready for my 1PM class, and that went a little bit better than my first class
because I corrected the mistakes that I made from the first class. For example,
I told my first class that I would e-mail them, and I forgot to take down their
e-mails. (I thought it would be provided by the registrar, but apparently not.)
I also forgot to show them the last slide that had their homework assignment. I
also moved through the lecture more smoothly the second time around because I
knew what points I wanted to get across. Nhi and I were definitely more
confident this time around, and it made me realize that it would be nice to
teach in an environment in America where I can be able to use the same lesson
plan for multiple classes so I work more toward improvement each time I use
them. Maybe I can follow my Cassell students to middle or high school…
The rest of the day moved by
quickly: got dinner at a vegetarian restaurant (two friends in our group are
vegetarian), went to a going-away party for an ex-pat (Westerner), ran into a
fellow Vietnamese-American organizer who is also going to be in Hue for a year
(yay Minhchau and Friends of Hue Foundation!), accidently got my fortune told
when I was walking down the street (I’m too scared to do that kind of stuff),
got locked out of my housing (gate locked 10 minutes before it was actually
supposed to), and knocked out once I got in.
Probably one thing that stands out
the most to me of that night was the fortune teller told me, after getting two
facts right about me, that she saw me relaxing at a beach, and that a child
with me would have be in the water and have trouble breathing. I think that she
meant that she saw someone close to me drowning. I got so scared that I rushed
away from her as fast as I could. I have a lot of younger cousins, so I imagine
I’ll be keeping an eye out for them every time I go to the beach with them…
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