Jeni as a Bangladeshi

You know,

As I help to create curriculum and coordinate training programs for the students here in Bangladesh, I am often reminded of my teaching experience at Hope Chinese School. Of dragging myself out of bed on Sundays mornings to my 9AM classes, pulling late nights on Saturdays (okay, sometimes due to procrastination) correcting homework and quizzes, and eating in the car while rushing from one campus to the other (and *ALWAYS* being late for my afternoon classes).

And as I think back on all of it now, it strikes me how much of my out-of-class college experience was from the time spent with my students (…and their homework). It’s also interesting how my perceptions about teaching evolved through those years. What began as a chore gradually turned into a personal, emotional responsibility - the highlight of my weekend was knowing that my students enjoyed class that day, and I took offense when I heard anything negative said about them (the adult Chinese community loves to gossip - it’s inevitable).

During those years, teaching for me had never been about drilling my students on mathematical formula or improving their test scores. They were already over-achieving and smart and under academic pressure from growing up in Chinese-American households. I didn’t see it my job to traumatize them more (well, academically). I wanted to make sure that the students also saw the other side of a classroom - that teamwork is important even in math, that it’s okay to challenge their teachers, that their hour with me is not to memorize the pythagorean theorem, but to learn how to think.

It’s been years since those days where my mornings began with quieting down hyperactive boys and reassuring female students that there’s no such thing as cooties. But thanks to technology (a.k.a. Facebook), I am updated as some of them graduate from school, travel around the country/world, or repeatedly list themselves as single-unsingle-single-unsingle, etc. As we all grow and mature (and get old), I hope that they, like myself, have kept a part of those crazy classroom days with them.

So this entry is dedicated as a thanks to my old students. Thank you:

• for being patient while I try to explain extremely dry material - believe me, I didn’t enjoy it either,
• for participating in our weekly "challenge questions" (such as "good-guys bad-guys"! It was hard explaining to your parents why there were shreds of paper with smiley/angry faces all over the room),
• for being on time even though I’m always late (but I always had an excuse, didn’t I?),
• for politely laughing at my corny, corny jokes…
• and then letting me make fun of you in return.
• for understanding that verbal class is not about early vocabulary; it’s about playing games and making huge posters (I still have them with me!)
• [and for those who came to my little Summer Camps] for going along with all the ‘lesson plans’, when it was clear that we were all there to have fun and eat bad food.