The first day teaching

15-01-2018

Prior to this internship all of my worklife had been bad to mediocre; retail, dole, retail, 2 weeks of work experience in a job I actually liked, office admin for a better than minimum wage but still not earning enough to live on a salary that you can settle down with, and that was life. For someone with 2 third level qualifications and a degree, that was pitiful. That I was currently in this independent situation of living in a house, no matter the circumstances then, was important to me. This should happen in your early 20’s, not your late 20’s. Funnily enough, House 5 tended to have older interns around 30, compared to the 23/24 year olds in other houses. Consider us the OAP house!

I had spent the weekend settling into the house, checking out its quirks and having banter with the neighbours. It didn’t take long to discover that House 5 was previously used as a brothel. That would explain the large mirror aligned by the side of my bed, as well as the relatively small rooms for a ‘hotel’, no windows in my room, and with the small shower/sink in each room. Still, thin enough walls must have killed the mood…or made their night.

There was a washing machine in the dark kitchen, as well as a fridge, coke fridge of all things, and a dodgy gas stove. Ultimately the kitchen didn’t appeal to me. A decent hob or a kettle might have swayed me, but one gas stove wasn’t going to be enough to make me cook. Diane did manage to stuff the freezer with plenty of food, so at least she has plans to use it. I did end up using the washing machine quite a bit though, even if it meant walking up 5 flights of stairs to hang up the clothes after.

Today was the day I started teaching. The excitement, the nerves, the preparation, all leading up to this first day. The good news was that my timetable on Mondays was ‘unfixed’ in the morning, so I had the first morning off unless given an e-mail the night before to get up early. Being the first of a new set of teachers, I was sure a lot of mistakes with timing may have happened in the morning. I had my alarm set for 10, but being a lazy person when it comes to time, I only woke up properly an hour later at 11. It still left a good hour to just wander around the area. I got into my baby blue short sleeved shirt, black trousers, brown shoes and red lanyard, and left the house. Both cafe Dang and cafe Ken were corner cafes only 50 or so meters away, but I decided to walk to Cafe hung/moc cafe. There, many teachers were chilling out there from the morning classes, talking about their first morning and having a few smokes.

I made the way to the taxi pickup at a quarter to 1, and waited outside the main accommodation. I got a secondhand sticky ball for entertaining the students as well, and then just had to wait. The teachers all gathered en mass before long and it was a cacophony of chatter, a sea of blue shirts and red backpacks. Even when a short lady in a red jacket came out to tell us who is getting in what taxi, she was seemingly ignored. It seemed that nothing could shut up the group, and after a while it got annoying to me. We do have a job to do after all. Eventually I got into an ABC taxi with Lizzy, or said by little Huong ‘Elissssabet annoy’.

We both got in, and just got talking about the excitement of what lay ahead. All the while the taxi drove out of the area, past an underpass, then following a road with power lines running parallel for a number of kilometers, and then to a roundabout with a dragon statue at the center. We also passes a mannequin outside a shop with mechanically rotating arms with a sign. It was definitely a tad creepy.

Eventually the taxi turned into a new, but unoccupied housing estate, and deep in the center of it lied An Hưng school. After getting the all clear from the security guard, the taxi drove off, and it was just me and Liz, walking through the eerily quiet school. It turns out the students were still asleep in the classroom, so we headed to the teachers room to go over plans.

The nerves were in me but I actually wasn’t in the shitting bricks or nerve shocking brain levels that I might have had if I was younger. I had brought 3 grades worth of flashcards, which ultimately proved unnecessary. My TA showed up after a giant gong struck. Her name on the sheet was Ly, but she was happy to be called Lily. I expected a woman in her 40’s, but she was around 25, had a slim build and lip piercing, black rectangular framed glasses, a white shirt, and boots that could walk all over you. She was a teacher at the school, not a dedicated BME TA, so she knew what she was doing. Fortunately, for a badass look she also had a friendly demeanour, checking if the plan was good and explaining what the students were like. I was in good hands. Myself and Liz went our separate ways as I went into class.

The nerves and excitement peaked as I walked into the class, where Lily shouted ‘STAND UP!’. Just like that, around 50 students all stood up, in their red An Hung uniforms, and chanted.

GOOD AFTERNOON TEACHER.

It was so harmonious, and had me a bit off guard with it, but I decided to keep up with what I thought would make sense to say next in my head.

How are you?

I’M FINE THANK YOU, AND YOU?

I’m good!

I decided to go with whatever Lily was hinting at, such as giving out team names and writing the date on the top line of the board. At that point I got all the students to read the date.

However, they didn’t know a thing about me, so I played games about what my name was, where I was from, and how old I was. Fortunately this did fill up a lot of time, roughly 20 minutes, so the rest of the lesson was a quick vocabulary drill and talk about rooms in a house. After a quick game of ‘throw this sticky ball at the board and hope it actually sticks’, the lesson was over, and a jolt of energy from finishing the lesson was running through me. It was a hit of adrenaline that hadn’t been felt in quite a while, but it did help get me through the following 3 classes, which were about jobs and dangerous things in the house.

After the 4th class I was free to leave, but first I had to weave through the swarm of students that had all left their classes at the same time to meet their parents on motorbikes at the game. Liz was outside the gate, and after meeting up with her again we got in the taxi and headed back. The relief of the day not being a complete disaster was great, let alone one that featured only a few mistakes. It was a good day all around.

After getting dropped off at the main accommodation, I headed to Circle K, got a Banh Bao, a cold Bia Hanoi, and headed to my room to take in the afternoons work. It was a short time in the school, but it was exciting, and it had me excited for Tuesday. I had a sticky ball, so I could at least try some new games, and I now knew not to pack my bag with a heap of flashcards when a handful would do. The only real issue I had was the early taxi time at a whopping 7AM the next day. Getting up at 5.45AM for work in Ireland prepared me well for that, but I can’t imagine it being enjoyable over the rest of the internship.