Start The Countdown, I’m Done

Well, it’s finally hit me.  I’m mentally and physically finished with teaching.  From here on out it’s just a matter of dragging myself to class in a zombie-esque fashion and moving around enough so my students know I’m not dead.  My last two classes have made me so angry I’ve actually felt physically ill afterwards.  I’m so exhausted after teaching that all I can bring myself to do is watch DVDs.  I’m down to Battlestar Gallactica for crying out loud, and the religious overtones in that show are so thick it just makes me more agitated.  So what’s the cause of my troubles?  Well mostly I’m just fed up with how little respect my students have for me, but what’s really pushed me over the edge is the final project.  The final project was supposed to be a fun way to carry my classes through the rest of the semester, but this week when I’ve given my classes time to work on their projects, they just stare at me with a blank look.  “Durrrrrr… what final project?”

The first class that reacted this way I asked them to take out the assignment instructions I asked them to write down last week, but of course they didn’t write anything.  So I decided if at least half the class could tell me what the assignment was, we’d still do it.  After twenty minutes of begging that escalated to outright screaming and cursing, only two people in a class of fifty knew what the assignment was.  So I made up a random sentence and made them all individually read it out loud.  The sad part is that some students even struggled with this.  I told them that for the rest of the semester I’d just come to class and make them read stupid sentences, but the truth is that would probably hurt me more than them.  So what I’m really going to do is just start over.  Fortunately I saved all my old lesson plans, so I can just reteach them everything again.  Clearly they haven’t learned anything from me, so to them it will probably seem like new material anyway.  I marked the class with a red flag on my schedule so I’d remember which ones are bad (like I’d forget).  I’m just dreading teaching the rest of my classes because there are a few I’d like to put a red flag by before giving them a chance.

They’re not just bad because their English is poor, either.  They’re just bad students all around.  They whine and complain all the time, they answer my questions in Chinese and think that’s acceptable, they talk during class, they listen to music during class, and they never write down anything I ask them to.  I could not get one of my classes to shut up one day and I was getting really frustrated.  Then their Chinese teacher walked past the window and it went dead silent.  I was so mad I almost left the class.  Instead I lectured them for several long minutes about how they have no respect for me and just think my class is an opportunity to come get a picture of the waiguoren and hope he does something funny.  Of course they probably don’t understand a word I said, but at least it filled up a class.  And basically that’s what I’m doing at this point; just filling time.  I’m just a babysitter for these kids, really.  And yes, I’m calling them kids now, even though this is a college, because they behave like babies.

What I really don’t understand is that these are supposed to be business English classes yet they don’t even have a grasp on basic English.  The classes are also mixed with a huge gap of ability so I have students that speak rather well, and students that can’t even do simple repetition.  It’s sad because I can’t teach to one group of students without boring the other, and because of that I get obnoxious bratty students.  Because of the obnoxious bratty students, nobody learns anything.  It feels like such a waste of time, and my only consolation is that I only have four weeks left.