Chinarchy

Anderson’s First Day

by Anderson | 02/25/10 | 2 comments

So I’ve had about 2 days of full work and I thought I’d write a post about how it has gone so far. Especially the first day which will likely be the template for what I will experience every other day.

The Worst Parts

Pretty much any time I was dealing with adults. Like McCoy explained in his last couple posts, trying to get things done (in an honest and legitimate way) is like pulling teeth in China. I spent all of my “adult interaction” time trying to figure out if I was keeping my job, if McCoy was getting one, where we were going to live, and why no one would just deal plainly with us.

But that wasn’t so bad. The absolute worst part — and will continue to be the worst parts of all my days — was seeing the poor treatment of children. It’s mostly a lot of little things that show how little respect adults have for children. The worst incident happened during the students’ lunchtime.

I was in my classroom sitting with my students when a Chinese assistant stormed into the room with a student of a different class. She was pulling him along with one hand and had his plate of food in the other. The assistant forced him into a seat at a far table and slammed the food down in front of him. She yelled at him angrily. Then, she pulled him out of his seat and dragged him toward our table while pointing and yelling. It was in Chinese but I guessed it was something like “Look at how well behaved they are!” She put him back into his seat, hard, and then walked out of the room.

My kids were just staring at me, trying to read my reaction. I got up and walked over the boy who had just been yelled at and sat down in front of him. He was sitting silently, staring at his plate of food, and brooding. After a few seconds of me sitting there he looked up.

“My name is Anderson. What’s your name?”

“My name is Derek…” And he burst into tears.

Jesus Christ, I hate this. “What’s wrong?”

He mumbled some words in Chinese and English. It sounded like “I don’t like this food. I don’t want to eat it.”

Suddenly the Chinese assistant appeared back in the room and came stalking over to our table. She slowed down when she saw me sitting there and sat down without saying anything. I asked her what the problem was. Her response was in Chinese, angry, and directed at Derek.

“He doesn’t like the food?” I asked.

The assistant nodded but gave Derek a look like You’re such a bad kid for not wanting to eat this.

“Can’t he just eat something else?”

She looked at me. Angrily at first, but then her face sort of… calmed. She picked up the plate of food and led Derek out of the room, presumably to find him something else to eat.

This was a small incident, especially in the grand scheme of how children are treated around the world. But it doesn’t matter. It’s a perfect example of adults not treating kids like they’re human beings.

I talked to the other teachers about it later and they agreed that it was terrible, but also warned me that I would see a lot of more it. “This is just how things are here. You can try to report the assistant, but since she didn’t hit the kid no one would do anything. Hitting isn’t even a big deal in China, let alone yelling. And if you do try to get the assistants in trouble it will just hurt you more. They are the headmaster’s eyes and ears and if you get on their bad side you won’t be here long.” Great. I’m going to see this happening over and over and every time I will have to walk the thin line of trying to help and protect the kids without pissing off the assistants. Because truly going after the aggressive assistants would mean losing any chance of helping the kids.

But this is the shit you have to deal with when you’re trying to do decent things in a world full of terrible things. What other choice is there besides giving up and accepting that the world will always be full of terrible things? That’s something I would be more inclined to accept if it wasn’t for what’s next…

The Best Parts

Easy, the kids. Spending the day playing with 5 and 6 year olds. How could that not be the best part? And the hundreds of moments of them learning and playing and laughing and just enjoying themselves that I got to witness and be part of.

I’m going to do a post describing my kids, but for now trust me that they are totally awesome. There are so many conversations and interactions that I want to explain, but I’ll just give you my favorite.

I was beginning my English lesson that was all about introductions. Every student is supposed to say something like “Hello everybody, my name is [whatever]. I’m five years old and I’m from [wherever].” So the Chinese assistants wheeled over a big whiteboard for me and I started writing out the introductory phrase.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” called Roxy. “But the last teacher used to write down all of our names and if we behaved we would get a star next to our name. And we got three stars then we’d get a sticker.”

Obviously, I was not going to do the whole rewards and punishments thing. “Hmm, well, what if we just forget about that whole star and sticker thing and you guys just behave on your own?”

I watched seven heads tilt like confused puppies. “Um, okay, I guess…”

So that was definitely my favorite moment. I just laughed and we moved on. It worked and the kids all behaved. It probably won’t always work. But the kids can’t ever really misbehave anyway. They want to do certain things and I want to do certain things. It’s not “misbehaving” just because I don’t want them to do it. The challenge is finding ways to work together so we can both get what we want. It’s definitely much harder than just “I’m the authority figure so do what I say.” But so what? The price for treating someone like they are a real human being and not a slave to be ordered around is never too high.

Anyway, this is a pretty long post so I should wrap it up. There are more sad moments that I could recount, but many more happy ones. I think I’ll save both for my next 360 days.