I’m sitting in my computer lab right now watching the students’ screens on the lab computer and typing this on my laptop sitting directly next to it. The bits I’m saying in class are in bold.
“GEORGE! WAKE UP!”
GAC2 is the worst class in the school. It’s not that they’re stupid, really, just very VERY lazy. In fact, I’m reticent to say that they are “lazy” because they do a LOT of work trying to find ways to cheat, or get out of doing any work that could be beneficial for them. This is the class that–
“MIKE! INTERNET OFF!”
This is the class where I discovered that SEVEN of the eleven students had cheated on an excel project. They’d copied the spreadsheet and charts from one student, then each of the students who copied it went through a lot of work changing the colors on the charts, the chart-layouts, fonts, and even the functions in the spreadsheet (ie: changed a3*b3 to B3*A3) to make it appear different. Of course it was obvious what they had done when they all made exactly the same typing mistakes, mistakes in their formulas, and when they forgot to change the headers and footers to their own name (It appeared as though there were 8 students named “Jim” when I graded that part of the test).
“ROGER, WENDY: GET TO WORK. GEORGE, WAKE UP OR I WILL SEND YOU TO TRISHA”
On their final project– a project that should take about 25 hours, most of them tried to tell me that they were finished after about 35 minutes. Of course I’d look at the project, see that they had met NONE of the requirements on their sheet (which they didn’t read at all–they just started making whatever web page they wanted) and then they would get angry when I told them that they weren’t finished in the slightest bit and hadn’t even completed one PART of the project). Two students, in the end, DID only make their websites in 3 hours because they missed so many classes or only sat staring at their screens for the other classes. George and Peter– Little fucking shits. I can’t wait for their parents to pay big bucks to send them to America only to have them come right back in one month when they can’t do anything in a REAL college. Yes, I know it is terrible for a teacher to wish such horrible failures on his students, but I don’t care one bit. I want to see them fail in life. I wish they would have to work as one of those people you see here walking around picking bottles out of trash cans (they won’t, their parents are rich and they’ll probably end up with a high, bullshit position in their daddy’s company). These two kids I yell at every day to turn-off-the-internet-wakeup-pay-attention-listen-to-me. I have to send them out of class once a week. I’ve met with their parents (who blame the teachers and administration for their kids’ bad behavior). I send them to Trisha (their class master who yells at them a bit). I’ve failed them on tests– but a “failure” doesn’t really mean “failure” at this school. They just get to “resit” the test again and again until they get a passing mark or have taken it enough times to memorize the questions. They didn’t even fail when I caught them blatantly cheating on that excel spreadsheet. I’ve done everything I can to try to stop this behavior, to get them to work
“ROGER STOP TALKING TO WENDY AND BOTH OF YOU GET TO WORK!”
and to try get them to learn ANYTHING and nothing works. Nothing changes, and they keep getting moved up and up until eventually they’ll get to graduate next week with a certificate that says that I, and their other teachers, have prepared them for studying in university. That makes ME look bad. So yeah, fuck that. If I want my good students to go to America and get a top notch education and do really well, I want the students who screw around in my class, ignore me, and do everything they can to flaunt the system (especially when there’s nothing I can do about it) to fail miserably in life. I want there to be some sort of karmic justice– you work hard and smart you do well in life, you do your best NOT to work you do poorly in life. I don’t know. I guess it’s still wrong for me to want my students to do badly, but, that’s about the only thing I can control here. If I can’t make them work, if I can’t even fail them for cheating, then at least I can wish them to do badly (and they will, mind you).
“Ariel? Are you ok? Well, ok, if you need to go out for a little bit that’s ok…” Ariel is our “crazy” student. Her mother told us that she had been to a psychiatrist who said that she is “psychotic”. I kind of doubt this is a poor translation too, given what I’ve heard about psychiatry in China. This year she has acted like she was going to jump out the 4th floor classroom window to “kill herself”, attacked a teacher who took away her cheat sheets, had a nervous break down and cried for 2 days when one of the teachers moved her to the back of the class so that the teacher could keep a better eye on a problem student. When you come near her, she kind of jumps and looks at you like you’re coming to attack her. I feel really bad for her, because she’s not that dumb, and it’s obvious that she really does have some condition that she can’t get help for. I feel really really bad for her in fact, and walk as lightly as I can around her. Of course the point that perhaps it’s a bad idea to send a girl who’s so unstable alone to a foreign country to study is lost on everyone except for her foreign teachers…
Today was supposed to be my last day with GAC2– ever. I was really excited about that. Two hours of review for the test and then the last hour to take that test. Then I would never have to see them again. I was even going to find some way to skip out of their graduation (since, in my opinion, only 3 students in the class deserve to graduate).
“ROGER INTERNET OFF!”
However, true to form, only 5 students showed up or class– the rest have to go get visas so they can get into America. As usual though, none of the students told me last week that they wouldn’t be here today when I announced at least 5 times that they would have their final exam today. So now I get to sit and watch them finish their projects in English, Science, and Business (all of which were due last week for them, of course). Here is what each of my five students are doing on their screen right now.
George: staring at computer screen moving his mouse up and down so it looks like he’s working. “George get to work!” He responds, “I am!”
Roger: talking to Wendy again. I’ll let him talk for another minute before telling him, again, to get to work. I’d move him, but then he’d argue that all his work is on the computer where he currently is.
Ariel: working on her science powerpoint presentation about Charles Darwin. The slide she is on now reads Title: “Having More Questions”, bullet points “What does his father do?” “What does his grand father do?”. She seems to be thinking of more relevent questions.
Mike: asleep again, his screen is on his desktop. He should be working on his computer project that was due last week.
“Mike! WAKE UP! Your project is already a week late!”
Wendy: her screen is on her English essay, but I haven’t seen her type anything in a while because, I suppose, Roger is talking to her.
“ROGER! WENDY! GET TO WORK!”
And so it goes. Class goes on, and I stew about having to play babysitter and that there’s nothing I can do to help these kids.
One final note, this class is really an exception. GAC1 (who graduated last nine weeks) was full of super intelligent, hard-working kids. Their final projects in my class were top notch, well researched, fun websites. Teachers loved them and they were great students. They got a lot from our program and any American university would do very well to have them. Not one instance of cheating or plagiarizing with those kids. The other students in our college, even the low levels, are all hard working but are just a bit deficient in English or general intelligence. This class is the only one that has students who are just plain horrible. This is the only class where I actively dislike the students. Luckily I will only have to see them for four more hours before we send them out to continue being failures somewhere else.
“ROGER! Move up here. You can use my USB key to move your work” He laughs a little bit and reluctantly moves. He will not come back for the third hour of class. He also, likely will never finish his projects, but, I’m certain he will be graduated.
However, one of the most telling differences between cultures that I’ve seen came in the form of ketchup. I had just finished buying clothes that magically just fit me with less than 10 minutes of looking, and I noticed the Burger King nearby our local clothing store. Burger King is quite the luxury in China: only a handful of cities have one compared to even the smallest of cities that will have multiple KFCs and McDonalds. Nanjing does have a recently opened Burger King, but it’s way out of the way, and surprisingly expensive by Chinese standards so we never really eat there. So, I decided to stop in the Magnolia Burger King for lunch.