This last week one of my 5th grade homeroom teachers and I had a rare opportunity to chat. The English offices are in a very remote location in our school, (which most of the time is a blessing), but it also means that the homeroom teachers and I only cross paths during class, when we have a room full of needy, chatty students to handle.
My 5-1 class had earned a movie day on their behavior chart, and I was standing at the back of the class trying to pay attention and monitor behavior while I watched the first forty minutes of Despicable Me for the third time in a row.
The homeroom teacher approached me and started to chat about our approaching Open Class Day at school--similar to Open House at home. He was asking me if we did this in the States, and that led to the question, "How is teaching here different from teaching in an American school?"
Oh, let me count the ways.
The first reason that popped into my head is the most important to me, and the biggest con in my opinion to teaching students that don't understand most of what comes out of your mouth and vice-versa.
You don't get the opportunity to really develop a relationship with your kids.
With higher level students, this is a different case. But with my third, fifth and sixth graders, our conversations are limited to what we are learning in the textbook or simple phrases such as how old are you, what's your name, what's your favorite food--the bare basics of conversation. That combined with the fact that I have 272 students (not counting my middle school on Fridays) the feeling of "temporary guest teacher" never really goes away.
If a student is crying in his or her seat, sure I can offer comfort but I can't find the root of the issue. While watching a movie clip and students are making comments, I have no way of knowing if they are talking about the lesson or about who won the soccer game at recess. If a student makes a joke in class and everyone, including my co-teacher chuckles, I'm left out of the loop. The little chit chat and gossip that allows you to develop a more person rapport with your students doesn't exist in my teaching world.
This definitely affects my ability to manage behavior in class, but more than that it's a bummer that I can't relate and bond with my students outside of the classroom. Especially when my little third graders run up to me chattering away in Korean, asking a million questions a minute that I don't know how to answer.
This barrier does have a couple benefits--I'm sure that there has been many a conversation that I wouldn't have wanted to hear if I had understood it. I imagine that over the past eight months my sixth grade boys have spewed out a whole array of fun facts that, if I had understood, I would have had to deal with. It does lift away a lot of the responsibility that homeroom teachers or native teachers shoulder every day.
But regardless of the benefits to not understanding everything that your students discuss around you, the communication barriers that occlude your ability to connect with your students take away some of the fundamental joys of teaching; getting to know what makes your students tick, what motivates them (other than candy, movies and games), and what they expect to get out of the salient and precarious student-teacher relationship.
