Watch what you wish for
Season has been replaced. She wasn't fired, thank goodness, but she no longer works as an English co-teacher - a position that paid more money than any other position at the Experimental Primary School. My new co-teacher's name is Christy. She used to be a co-teacher for the older grades and left to have her baby. Now she's back, ready to teach again and she's all business, which is great and a big change. The shift will occur when we return from the break so I have this week to get my act together and re-structure the way in which I create lesson plans. I'm very excited. I have been given the chance to learn doubly and to be a good teacher. Julia and I are now a well-oiled machine and I expect the same will occur with Christy. I'm so lucky. Apparently, the complaints weren't coming from me alone. And my complaints were few. I told Julia after one particularly grueling class with Season that she had interpreted a couple of key points of my lesson incorrectly. I wouldn't have had a clue if it hadn't been for my rudimentary understanding of Mandarin. Also, she told the children that I "didn't love them when they misbehaved" and that I would "leave the school if they weren't nice" and this, I just couldn't tolerate. But, she said it was the only way to get them to behave...for an afternoon. I also asked Mr. Ye to speak to Season about a request I had made. We were giving a test on a Monday and I gave her the test on Friday so that she could review it and translate the directions. On Monday morning, an hour before the first test was to be given, she showed me the test, folded up and untouched in her purse.
The strange thing is, on the day when she was told she was being demoted (more or less) she showed me what were essentially glamour shots of her taken a year ago. She told me she loved the photos and wished she could get paid for looking attractive. The weirdest part of the conversation was actually looking at the photos. They didn't LOOK like her. I was sort of speechless and she could see my confusion. But she promised the photos were of her. I feel a little guilty, like I should have tried harder with her, but it just wasn't working. And it wasn't working because she didn't speak English. As I've said before, I wish I spoke better Chinese, but it wasn't a requirement for this job and speaking English is. I know that sounds arrogant, but it is so frustrating to have the foreign teachers all around me doing a successful job because their co-teachers speak English and I'm having to explain to my co-teacher that she's just translated my lesson incorrectly. Okay, I should get off of my high horse. This is all guilt talking right now. I'm terribly defensive because I do feel that I should have toughed it out more. I'll just stop talking about this now.
Today is the first official day of our break and Eileen and I are going on an adventure yet to be determined. It's 8:30am and we're off!
