Wednesday teaching in Cổ Nhuế

17-01-2018

I mentioned in the last post that Cổ Nhuế was great for banter and bad for everything else, but I was getting ahead of myself. Without a doubt it was the quintessential ‘schticks’ school for my internship; beyond the CT20 ringroad, painted yellow that was fading fast, quite a distance away from any high rise buildings, and with noisy students that were difficult to control without plenty of games. But it was more than simple location that made it the worst.

Myself, Chris Howells, Mia and Niamh would wait for our taxi, but the driver tended to want to get the job over and done with. After a while we made a deal with him that we could leave a slight bit later so we could avoid the teachers room, or lack of it…

After the long drive, we would walk through the gates of Cổ Nhuế 2B, and through a ground that was fully tiled, the afternoon sun would blind us all reflecting off the cement tiles. It had a sense of the exotic with the palm trees, iron rail bridge nearby and golden sun, as if this is the Vietnam you see in the movies. But all the fun would quickly dissipate when we looked for the teachers room. As it turns out, while there was a teachers room, we were simply not allowed in it! So where would we go to check our plans?

Under the stairs.

No, I’m not kidding. 4 BME teachers, the teaching assistants and a heap of paperwork all had to work under the staircase of the school and prepare from there. Students would press their faces and noses off the doors. It was very distracting and had very little privacy to think.

The classes themselves were OK. By this point in the week I had gone through enough of the same lesson to do it effectively. The only issue was one class in particular with a special needs student.

Vietnamese families often don’t have the luxury of sending students with special needs into a dedicated learning environment to help their education. Instead they have their students try and learn to fit in with a classroom with 60+ students. On top of that, the regular teachers don’t seem to care one wit about the students, and you alone are responsible for giving them something to do. On 2 separate days of the week I would have to approach the difficult task of accommodating children with special needs, and Cổ Nhuế 2B is one such day.

It was a shock. One of the students was roaring loudly one minute into the class, and I sternly reasoned with him to be quiet. Then my TA approached me and said ‘don’t worry teacher, he is not normal’. And the pin dropped in my brain. And a whole swirl of ‘holy fuck I’m after being mean to a special needs child’ was rolling around inside. But before I could find something alternative for him to do, he ran outside the classroom to chase a fly out of the room. The TA wasn’t bothered in the slightest and thought it was great that he was out of my hair, but I still felt incredibly guilty for being harsh at first.

For future weeks I would give him some paper and suggest he draw something relevant to the taught topic, but I knew deep down he would be lucky to have a squiggle on the page. He would even use the paper to rub his genitals or his belly and it would really distract from the class, but if it meant the other 59 students were attentive it was what I needed to do. He deserved better, but I was no special needs tutor. It didn’t please me.

The way back from the school was manic. The school flooded with all the motorbikes in the general area, and we jogged into the taxi to leave. The sun had sank lower, and burned red through the dust particles. The taxi would take us either the CT20 highway route, or the (now more interesting) Stadium route. It turned out that the alternate route was part of the F1 Hanoi Street circuit, so I can lay claim to having been on the roads!

The route involved passing Mỹ Đình stadium and a large telecoms tower, so it was more memorable than the usual motorway route. It did feel like a long ride either way, especially with so many blocked junctions with traffic around 5PM. At least Niamh, Chris and Mia were good to talk to. It sometimes seemed that we were forged in fire through these classes. They would often talk of having a similarly dour time at the school, Niamh especially.

Either way, end of the humpday, and the week only got easier from here! Just Kim Giang to go for the main schools!