Hallo from the other side.

Disclaimer: (this has nothing to do with Adele. I apologize in advance)

It’s funny how it feels to be on the other side of a system you’ve been a part of for almost all your life; whether it be customer service, banking or schooling. Somehow you take for granted all the effort and strategic planning that goes into the operation of this particular system, whether it is properly functional or not.

I’ve been a student long before my sense of self was fully developed. In fact, some of my earliest memories were of learning. And even though I’ve been a model student all these millions of years (despite the bickering, the random comments in class, the teasing, distracting other students, randomly singing and dancing in class…- okay maaaybe, just maybe, I wasn’t such a model student after all), I always considered myself to be a responsive and attentive pupil (i.e always offering to answer a question when it seemed no one else would, even if I wasn’t too sure about the answer.)

Now, as the person on the other side of the classroom, I wish I had more students like myself because there is truly nothing worse than staring at a class full of mimes.

Teaching a foreign language, I’ve learnt, is sometimes a lot like having an unending conversation with yourself with the hope that maybe, just maybe, a brave student will take the leap and say a sentence in English.

Of course, there are some students who are bursting at the seams, ready to speak English, eager to improve their foreign language skills and these students are a joy to teach. Students who strive to make sentences with more than a mere subject and verb, with maybe a complex predicate and if the universe allows it, an actual coherent paragraph, are my drug.

But even if I have 10 students and 9 are engaged in the lesson and appear to be genuinely interested, the 1 student with her hand on her cheek, her eyes listless and her face exuding the poster image for disinterest is the student I am going to focus on. Drawing this student out of the dark woods or boredom becomes the principal objective of every lesson plan, every activity and every video.

Now, after a little over a month of being an English language assistant, I’ve learnt not to dwell on these bored to death students and instead focus on the ones, who despite the mountains of grammatical errors, make all the work you’ve done to create an interesting lesson plan worthwhile. Most importantly I have squelched the urge to prop my chin on my upturned palm and stare back into the face of that ONE student qui a jamais envie de participer. ARGH!

When I go back home to Jamaica and resume my illustrious position as a student at my university, I vow to be a more conscientious student. No longer will I stare at the teacher with the mask of resting bitch face securely in place. I will nod my head to the tune of never ending moral support, raise my hand long before he or she resorts to picking on people to participate and by God, I will scrounge up the tiniest sliver of energy to say “Yes, I understand.”