Wind In My Head: Brain Pain
Wind In My Head
Friday, April 22, 2005
Brain Pain
The most painful thing you could do as a teacher, apart from marking 200 very badly written essay scripts in a span of 2 weeks, is to meet the parents of these essay writers and tell them in the most diplomatic of ways that their child isn't really doing that well.And to make it even worse, for me anyway, is to have to conduct this entire exchange in Chinese.
Today was the dreaded Meet the Parents Session. And I'm in school still at half 8 at night. We used to hold these things on Saturday afternoon, but since Saturdays are now embargoed, we hold everything on Friday evenings so that means everytime there's something like this, I end up missing pilates *growl*
So, I sit at this table, with my class number prominently displayed and await visitation from anxioua parents. Unfortunately, my college, being a heartland college of sorts yields parents who do not speak English too well. Unfortunately for them, I don't speak Chinese too well. So, it's a chicken and duck situation (not the one with prostitutional connotations, the other chicken and duck. Also, not the chick and duck from F.R.I.E.N.D.S).So in my flailing Chinese, I valiantly try to hold prescriptive conversations like
"Your son has got a good mind, but his grammar foundation is weak. So, when he writes, his ideas can't be brought across clearly."
"Your daughter is very high strung and anxious. On top of that, she is very shy so it's very difficult to find out what she doesn't understand. Ah, but don't worry, she will eventually do well in her final exams"
and then go on to outlying the entire syllabus for the subject and the different types of questions that appear.
"Don't worry, let me tell you the format of the paper and what your child needs to do in order to do well in the examinations... "
... here indicates a deep breath and a five minute struggle to explain the intricacies of university admission.
"The local universities' entry criteria are as follow..... This is how you calculate your child's entrance score..."
At the end of that, I received some very loud applause from my colleagues who were impressed that my brain did not implode because of the effort, although I did announce quite loudly after that that MY BRAIN PAIN!
None of this made any easier by the fact that I have a huge blister on the side of my tongue and it hurts. It hurts when I have to speak in class at any speed and volume and the pain is multiplied exponentially when I speak in Chinese because my tongue isn't used to wrapping itself round the Mandarin syntax.
I shall now go rest.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 20:25
