The Alchemy of Teaching

"Every day is a new adventure."  

I can't remember who said this to me first but, in terms of secondary teaching, it pretty much sums up my experiences in schools.  Whether in St Albans or UB or Toorak, there are so many variables swirling around a school that the whole endeavour feels more than a little random.  Your lessons can swing from complete triumphs to utter failures, due to nothing to do with your lesson planning however well wrought or nonexistent it might be.  This is not to say that planning doesn't matter.  Far from it: you must plan or you'll never last a week but often this planning is more alchemy than clinical practise (sorry Melbourne University Graduate School of Education!); it can be frighteningly improvisatory, especially when your teaching load is full of subjects and year levels you've never thought about let alone taught.

One of my main problems in the classroom this year has been the students in each class (there's perhaps 2 or 3 for every class) whose English skills are so low that they can't communicate to you in even simple terms, let alone understand Geographic concepts that you're trying to get across.  I suppose this is somewhat similar to my problems last year at Brimbank, but what's different here is that these students' base English is absolutely nothing rather than Western suburbs Boganglish.  To compound these issues, a number of these students clearly are dealing with undiagnosed learning difficulties like ADHD or Asperger's or both.  They're undiagnosed because no one seems to think that they exist (a common problem in Asia actually) in the first place.  The behaviour of these kids is predictably terrible.

                                    

I've got 2 classes where this is a major problem; one in grade 6 and the other in grade 7.  The Grade 6s are a class that is universally thought to be one of the naughtiest, most disruptive and least functioning of all classes in the school.  My experiences with them have been an exasperating mix of bewilderment, anger and frustration in Term 1, topped off with a disastrous final "reflective" class on the unit.  Due to a couple random holidays, I hadn't seen them for the entire term so far, which was a happenstance that made my life immeasurably easier, until I strolled into class on Wednesday morning bracing myself for the absolute worst.  To my surprise, they were completely different: attentive, interested and dedicated.  They listened to me.  They did their work.  They were excited about my "Country of the Week" activity like never before.  My approach to them, my teaching voice, hadn't really changed I think.  The difference was that we were creating maps, so the language demands were low in favour of creative, visual intelligences that I hadn't unlocked before.  After class, I sat in shock at a completely enjoyable, stress free lesson from these well known scoundrels.

The grade 7s are something else entirely: the Jekyll & Hyde class.  The first week after holidays, I had the worst lesson of the year with them (and one of my worst since the dark days of term 1, Brimbank!). All of my plans failed.  They refused to do work and didn't respond to any of my verbal cues.  Afterwards, I had to get out of school and clear my mind.  The next week, they were great.  And then this week, they were back to their ratbag ways, although after speaking with their English teacher, they were completely insane in his class as well.

It comes down to some of the things I learnt at Brimbank last year when confronted with the worst class in the worst year level (year 9) at a school where most of the students had some serious issues (it's called Stab Albans for a reason).  It took an entire semester and several changes of approach but eventually 9M came around and we did some very good work together after several months of struggles.

• You've got to be flexible enough to keep trying new shit. 
• The kids' memories are shockingly short term.  They probably don't remember the last disaster as much as you do.
• Sometimes, it just doesn't work.
• Do what they enjoy 
• Keep it moving.  Have plans B, C, D, E, and F
• Regulate yourself; you're the adult in the room
• They're just kids 

The last point came to me when speaking with a student in 9M at Brimbank who was well known for being violent, rude, and overbearing, while also trying to deal with his severe autism and ADHD.  He had done all sorts of shit in and out of class and I hadn't made any connection with him at all until one day in the library (we had a weekly reading in the library period that was the bane of my existence in terms 1 and 2) he took me through all 200 or so pictures he took when he flew from Melbourne to Malta via Dubai.  Many of the pictures were painfully dull to outside eyes but to this kid this was the most fascinating stuff he'd ever experienced and he was just so damn happy to share it with me.  He loved planes and knew more about commercial jets and airports than anyone I'd met since a friend of mine from UBC.  I soon adjusted all his work accordingly.

The key is to find what do these kids love as much as that kid loved planes.

Between Mozambique and Syria

According to Transparency International, Mongolia ranks 120th in the world (out of 182) in terms of corruption.  It scored 2.7 out of 10, which puts this country tied with noted corrupt regimes Iran, Guatemala and Mozambique, and just in front of Syria, Honduras and Cameroon.  To be 120th, corruption must haunt nearly every transaction and, indeed, much of the country's issues can be traced back to some form of corruption.  Even if you have massive deposits of copper, coal, and gold, it doesn't matter that much if your country's finances leak like a dollar store sieve.

In the streets and pubs of Ulaanbaatar, you hear about corruption a lot.  Mongolians are not stupid and most seem to understand that the exchanges of cash (and so forth) at the highest level deprive the lower levels of ever seeing the country's extensive mineral riches in any real, consequential and long lasting way.  While every Mongolian child receives 20,000 tugrics every couple weeks (about $13 or $14), the benefits of this short term cash infusion are lost as soon as the cash is put into the economy.  No roads are built (or repaired), education is still lacking, and the infrastructure is ever so laughably inadequate.  The real bulk of the money that is flowing into the country is diverting straight into the pockets of a small elite in a very real way.

I've been thinking about corruption more than I ever have since I first came to UB in January.  Corruption must come from somewhere, and my experiences as a teacher here have seemed to suggest that its tenets are instilled from a young age.  There's a few tales that will have to wait for the book, but until then, here are 2 stories:

• For the first term, I've been preparing the school's debate team for the national debating championship, which determines what team makes it to the Asia regional finals.  We wanted to host the debate and made overtures to do so.  But, our main rival (who came 50th out of 50 last year) decided to hold the "national" championships themselves, as an internal competition and did not invite a single other school to participate.  They proclaimed a national team and submitted the results of the "competition" onwards to the international organisation.  When we found out, we pointedly asked them to schedule a real competition but they have said that their internal championships count and cannot be redone because no other school registered (because they didn't invite anyone to register).  I was more upset than the kids who seemed to brush it off as an entirely normal turn of events.

•  A friend of mine heard about an incident in the locker rooms one day.  One kid, let's call him "John," pushed another student into a locker and held the door shut as Ken desperately tried to get out.  As soon as he heard about what happened my friend went straight to John's class (I was teaching him geography at the time) and pulled John out of class to give him a stern lecture.  Afterwards, it was my friend and not John who got pulled into the Principal's office where he was chewed out for "using threatening body language" against a student, and was warned to, under no circumstance, do anything similar ever again.  The other kids in class were, of course, nonplussed  by this turn of events and later explained that John never gets in trouble with the administration because his mother is in the administration.

I wonder about what types of lessons are being taught by little incidents like these.  If schools are the places where standards of behaviour are taught and enforced, then the behaviours here are smack full of a form of corruption (or at least nepotism) that is, for the kids, completely normal and not fucked up at all.  If you grow up in this logic, the outcome will likely be even more corruption.

Educational corruption is pervasive and self replicating in this fashion.

Vacay in Beijay

Not Beijing: Tianjin

It takes about a day to fully switch into Beijing mode.  You can have your ideals of how to exist in and contribute to civil society but, after being physically jostled for the 20 billionth time, you have to put your elbows up and push back to fight for your space.  What's interesting to me is that, for the most part, the constant level of physical contact in Beijing isn't that related to violence (or even its threat).  Instead, it's more about asserting that you exist, and that you want something (space, the exit, a seat, etc.).  Of course, this frame of mind doesn't make for an easy experience or a society that is invested in mutual social responsibility and trust.  It also doesn't make Beijing, in my opinion, a very good place to live especially if your mandarin is frankly lacking.  

Beijing though is an endlessly fascinating place to visit, especially after 3 months in Ulaanbaatar as it slouches towards its pseudoapocalyptic deep winter.  After a 5 hour delay due to the ongoing 18th Communist Party Congress, I flew into Beijing on Friday night, mere hours after finishing my teaching for the term.  Beijing's massive Norman Foster designed airport is something of a sight to behold the first time you fly into PEK.  But, after flying in and out of that airport something like 12 times in the last year, it's less of an experience to be admired but rather one to be endured, as your plane taxis for literally 5 to 10 km to reach a runway, or you hike through miles of sterile corridors with nothing to see or do, or when looking for basic ammenities like perhaps some water , or something to do (or even eat) when you need to kill some time.  This is China: personal comfort is not an architectonic concern, only grandiosity and totalitarian spirit.

Nevertheless, Beijing is a land of plenty, compared to UB, and the vast number of quality places to eat or shop or just hang out in is striking after being reduced to self reliance (and dysentery) by Mongolian markets and eating spots.  In my first trip to the local expat supermarket, I wandered around in a daze, stunned by the selection of (imported) goods, almost all of which are unthinkable in UB.  It's telling that when a friend asked us what we had planned in Beijing, almost everything that came to mind was food and beverage related.

During the trip, we also checked out Tianjin, which is a mere 30 minutes away from Beijing via the superduper fast train.  Stepping into Tianjin is like heading into a mirror universe China, with its well preserved colonial, turn of the century architecture (parts of Tianjin were divided up amongst the European powers) and general charm, which is something that is missing from much of Beijing. In between breaks from a mining conference that Tess had to go to, we wandered the colonial backstreets of the city, discovering little shops, noodle joints, abandoned colonial mansions, Victorian parks that would not be out of place in Melbourne, and, of course, the gleaming new towers of Chinese modernity.  

The enmity that many if not most Mongolians feel for China is both completely unsurprising and a bit of a shock in its intensity in Mongolia.  The level of trust between the two countries is non existent, and Mongolia's mineral riches in copper and coal are 2 things that China as it so happens desperately needs.  This lack of trust manifests in daily life.  In class, a grade 8 student was taunted by his classmates because his grandfather was Chinese.  The country's impossibly gigantic Chinggis (Genghis) Khan statue (in stainless steel, mounted on a horse) is pointedly facing China as if to act as a North East Asian Maginot line against a possible Chinese invasion.  

Many times I have had conversations with people (friends, friends of friends, students) in UB where paranoid, xenophobic ideas about China are spouted as truth.  I've had to generally let these ideas slide, not wanting to expose my (half) heritage.  I've been most surprised that no Mongolians have really latched onto that fact.  In China, I confuse the locals who 50% of the time assume that I'm some sort of the many minorities that the Han oppress and generally treat me in that manner. 

WTF Architecture

While I was away, the Mongolian government declared that today, Nov. 14, would be a holiday celebrating the birth of the great man, Chinggis Khan (the Man of the Millennium, apparently).  This holiday would be effective immediately, so that the first Wednesday of Term 2 is a day off (next Wednesday is another holiday too).  If only the Government, you know, dealt with the other more pressing needs of the country (corruption, the environment, urban growth, mineral dependance, infrastructure, the future) as quickly!  This morning, I was walking to Millie's for breakfast and was cut off by a battalion of soldiers, cradling AK47s and marching in unison down the middle of one of the biggest streets in town.  I followed them and came across some sort of military exercise in Sukhbaatar square, complete with a marching bands playing something that came across as something out a sandal epic soundtrack, dudes in pointy helmets with bayonet mounted rifles, said battalions of soldiers with high powered guns, and soldiers in berets keeping anyone non military off the square.

The invasion awaits.

Term One Review

In some ways, it's been a long 2 and half months since I arrived in Ulaanbaatar.  Moving cities, countries and continents has become something that has happened to me with an alarming regularity since I graduated from high school, despite my deep seated homebody mentality.  I was talking with a couple friends in Toronto at the Victory back in June about a possible move to UB.  After hearing some of my early stories of North East Asia, DuBois called me an "adventurer," which to me seemed a bit rich but, looking back and after a few months here, perhaps the people who find their way to UB are all a little crazy, unhinged, adventurous, stupid, brave, foolhardy (take your pick).

This term's felt very long, despite being only 9 weeks long (10 weeks total, with the week beforehand). There was, yes, the Unfortunate Dysentery Pandemic and resultant anal swabs (for the record, I slipped out of school when they were going around with their probes, which I'm told was the thing to do).  But there were also the realities of sliding back into the teaching grind after 6 months as a man of leisure (aka bored to death), and the experience of finding your way in a new school community with its own logics (or illogics), positives and disappointments. 

I was thinking about all this on Saturday morning while nursing a Halloween party related hangover.  The previous night we were out with our dear friend Will and found ourselves in successively more surreal spots.  We started at the Grand Khan Irish Bar (owned absurdly by the company that also owns my school and half of the country) where Will was in an argument with a fellow American over the presidential election, while the executives from Oyu Tolgoi (the copper gold mine that is the key to the county's future, basically) were drinking heavily a few tables over.  Our next stop was the British Embassy's "Steppe Inn" (basically, a makeshift bar on the Embassy's grounds that's only open to members and their guests) where we downed a few drinks before time was called.  The German embassy's cultural attache was at the Steppe Inn and invited us down to a Halloween party across town at a "club" on Seoul street.  We jumped into a black cab but unfortunately had no idea where the club was at and we were eventually dropped off underneath a bridge.  Eventually we made it to the club by foot, an hour after the cultural attache and his crew.

I can't repeat most of the stories you hear in UB of corruption, incompetence and just generally ridiculous situations, which are so unbelievable that they must all be true.  (The Unfortunate Dysentery Pandemic is joining the ranks of these tales, for better or worse.)  The point for me is that the best way to think of this time is as an adventure of sorts.  I know, I know, Mongolia is people's lives.  It's their country.  Its future means their future.  The corruption and incompetence is directly tied to the hopes of their little country wedged in between Russia and big bad China.  

But, as an expat interloper, it is an adventure.  This doesn't mean that I'm some sort of "super expat" who just gets drunk every day, posts ridiculous photos instantaneously on facebook, and generally acts like they're still in college.  I'm in the community somewhat, working with my 220 or so students, trying my best to teach them obscure geographical concepts and historical thinking skills.  After a term, I've seen some progress.  I've also fucked up a few times.  But that's part of the profession and its demands for creativity and the  ability to keep going in and keep trying different shit until it works.  I'm sifting through the hundreds and hundreds of exams my students have written in the last week (the school mandates monthly tests for whatever reason) and there might be something happening here (for some of them).

I'm exhausted and ready for the holidays though (I'm off to Beijing tomorrow).  But I'll be back at it soon enough.

Dysentery Blues

The infectious diseases people came back with the results of their tests late last week.  The pandemic was dysentery caused by the Shigella bacterium.  For those without expertise in food borne illnesses of the 19th century, according to the great source of lazy students everywhere Wikipedia, dysentery is "an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the feces^[1] with fever, abdominal pain,^[2] and rectal tenesmus (a feeling of incomplete defecation). If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal." Apparently, the main culprit was (surprise, surprise) the cafeteria, which itself had unsafe food handling practises resulting in shigellosis being transmitted via the kitchen's surfaces.  

Being something I had only considered when I was playing the Oregon Trail on the Mac II computers at Westbrook Elementary School, circa 1991, I looked into it from a historical perspective.  Here, again from Wikipedia, is an incomplete list of dysentery's historical casualties:

• 1216 – King John of England died of dysentery at Newark Castle on 18 October 1216.^[21]
• 1422 – King Henry V of England died suddenly from dysentery in 1422, he was thirty-five years old.
• 1596 – Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral died of dysentery on 27 January 1596 while attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.^[22] He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near Portobelo.
• 1605 – Akbar the Great, ruler of the Mughal Empire of South Asia died of dysentery. On 3 October 1605, he fell ill with an attack of dysentery, from which he never recovered. He is believed to have died on or about 27 October 1605, after which his body was buried at a mausoleum in Sikandra, Agra.^[23]
• 1675 – Jacques Marquette died of dysentery, on his way north from what is today Chicago, traveling to the mission where he intended to spend the rest of his life.^[24]
• 19th century – As late as the nineteenth century, the 'bloody flux,' it is estimated, killed more soldiers and sailors than did combat.^[8] Typhus and dysentery decimated Napoleon's Grande Armée in Russia. More than 80,000 Union troops died of dysentery during the American Civil War.^[25]
• 1896 – Phan Dinh Phung, a Vietnamese revolutionary who led rebel armies against French colonial forces in Vietnam, died of dysentery as the French surrounded his forces on January 21, 1896.^[26]
• 1930 – The French explorer and writer, Michel Vieuchange, died of dysentery in Agadir on 30 November 1930, on his return from the "forbidden city" ofSmara. He was nursed by his brother, Doctor Jean Vieuchange, who was unable to save him. The notebooks and photographs, edited by Jean Vieuchange, went on to become bestsellers.^[27][28]
• 1942 – The Selarang Barracks Incident in the summer of 1942 during the Second World War involved the forced crowding of 17,000 Anglo-Australianprisoners-of-war (POWs) in the areas around the barracks square for nearly five days with little water and no sanitation after the Selarang Barracks POWs refused to sign a pledge not to escape. The incident ended with the capitulation of the Australian commanders due to the spreading of dysentry among their men.^[29]

Luckily, it is very treatable and the only casualties were the appendices of 2 students which were unnecessarily removed due to the misdiagnoses of doctors!

The question soon moved onto what might the school do for the rest of the term (2 more weeks!).  With the cafeteria closed for the forseeable future due to obvious reasons, the expected course of action might be to ask students to pack a lunch, set up a few microwaves around the school, and have kids eat at school while trying our best to catch up after a week without students (especially with another round of reporting at the end of this month).

Of course, this was not the plan of action to be taken!  Instead, students would not bring in any food (they were instructed not to take in any food too), the school day would be trimmed from 10 periods a day to 5, 6 or 7 (depending on year level), and students would leave between noon (for primary students) and 1:30 (for secondary students).  Administration instructed teachers to not eat anything until the students left (so as to not exacerbate their hunger).  To facilitate these changes, the school's entire timetable would need to be rejigged.  With less periods in total, certain classes would need to sacrifice some of their lessons.  You might expect that the subjects to get the chop would be the relatively unimportant (such as phys ed, the humanities aka social studies, the arts, etc.) but instead math, Mongolian and English would sacrifice about a third of their lessons.  I'm still trying to figure out the wisdom of cutting core subjects.  (In short: there isn't any strong pedagogical justification as far as I'm concerned.)   Oh, and teachers were still expected to be at school until 4 PM for, wait for it, more meetings in Mongolian.

So, while the vast majority of teachers saw their own teaching load reduce somewhat (mostly shrinking by a third), I saw no reduction of my teaching time, only a reduction of the breaks I have during a day.  So, instead of teaching 24 lessons in a 50 period timetable (with at least one a day for lunch), I have to teach 24 in 35.  (As an aside, most teachers at school, especially local teachers, work a 15 to 18 lesson week during normal times, which has been reduced to perhaps 10 to 12 lessons per week now.)  Throwing lunch in there (or at least a morning tea break), this means I have only 6 breaks in a week.  This allotment was made even worse when my personal timetable was finally passed onto me yesterday, which sees only one period off on Tuesday and none at all on Wednesday.  I teach from 8 AM to 1:30 PM without a real break (in between periods, I hustle from one end of the school to the other).  I've asked around and it looks like I'm the only teacher to have a no break day.

As a formely active member of my teachers union, I'm frankly appalled at these conditions, which are hardly beneficial to staff or students.  After a day of this schedule so far, I've found that the kids were starving by their 5th or 6th straight period and were unable to do any meaningful work (especially in lower grade levels).  By the time I was actually finished with speaking to students, it was about 2 PM and I was exhausted (even with a one period break).  I'm bracing myself for tomorrow's 7 out of 7 day.

Food Borne Boredom

Food Borne Pandemic

It started on Tuesday.  A few kids were absent, more than the usual at least, and rumours started to fly about a "stomach bug" that was spreading.  The next day, more than half of the school was missing.  Classes were suspiciously empty and my usually chatty Year 10s were completely quiet as they studiously completed their homework.  Very strange!  By Thursday afternoon, the school was nearly deserted, and the students that remained had no taste for any work whatsoever.  By Friday afternoon, the remaining kids in years 9 through 12 (perhaps 20 total) took it upon themselves to wag en masse.  Instead of teaching about urbanisation, I read a few chapters of DeLillo's Cosmopolis in an empty class, before packing it up and leaving school.

After a relaxing weekend, I walked to school with the new caustic noise rap from Death Grips on my headphones and thought about the week ahead and how I as going to conquer my latest nemesis of a class.  As I approached the school, I noticed that the school buses weren't parked out front as per usual.  I was a few minutes late for the singing of the national anthem (it happens everyday) but not that unprofessionally absent that the buses would have dropped the kids off and left.  As I entered the gates, I saw that none of the classroom lights were on, which was even more strange.  In fact, the entire school was empty with no teachers or students or even staff in sight.  I wandered aimlessly looking for colleagues before checking out the cafeteria, where I walked in (a little late) to an impromptu school meeting.

The news? School was cancelled.  In fact, students would not attend for the entire week.  The cause was a "stomach flu" which to, you and I, means food poisoning.  More than half of the school was affected, and the school had called in the infectious diseases hospital to test the food served at school, to examine any students or staff who felt sick. Teachers though were expected at school for the entire week.  To do what?  Well, that was undefined.  Perhaps lesson plan, or catch up on marking.  As usual, it took over an hour to make these points and the entire meeting was conducted in Mongolian (we had someone translate for us afterwards).  

Being surprisingly up to date on my plans, I braced myself for a week of tedium.  There's nothing as boring as a school without kids.  The energy of the place is drained without the day to day, minute to minute, interaction of the classroom.  There's only so many people to stalk on Facebook.  There's only so many websites to aimlessly read.  There's only so many long lunches you can take.

Yesterday, the new directive was that every class needed to be cleaned.  Every surface needed to be scrubbed, all tables and chairs and walls disinfected.  And this was to be done by teachers.  Putting aside the efficacy of this plan in terms of dealing with a food borne illness, we're not janitors.  We're teachers.  And then, today, the cleaners went through the classrooms and cleaned all the surfaces again, as if to underline the futility of the exercise.  

Luckily, today, I remembered to bring in my friend Andy Croome's new novel Midnight Empire, which was an excellent way to spend the morning and afternoon.  Sandwiched in between these sessions, Lena, a coworker and friend, and I walked to the impossibly massive Naral Tuul ("Black") Market, a seemingly endless open air labyrinth selling basically anything and everything (from kimchi to garishly amazing nomad gear to Hitler statues).  We had lunch in a little stall in the market.  Mongolian tea (salty, milky and Lena's even had a piece of fat in it) with boiled meat (I want to say beef but it could have been horse), cabbage salad, potatoes with mayo, and 2 little mounds of white rice topped with ketchup.  It might not be GANGNAM STYLE CHICKEN but it did the job.  We hiked our way back to school, passing the Wrestling Palaces (both present and past) and the impressively CIA like exterior of the Mongolian headquarters of the Mormons.  At school, we found teachers playing chess, reading books, facebooking, reading the paper, playing Nirvana covers on acoustic guitar, listening to music, tapping obsessively into their phones, and so on.  

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Winter is coming

Winter is coming (Not shown: winter)

The first flecks of snow fell in the last week of September.  I was teaching grade 9 geography and the kids en masse stopped paying attention to the lesson and gazed out the windows.  Snow.  It melted by midday but that seems almost obscenely beyond the point.  Winter is coming.

I experienced 2 weeks of Ulaanbaatar in January earlier this year and it's something to be feared.  Minus 40C everyday for 4 months.  Lung clogging and cough enducing smoke from the ger camps.  Ice everywhere due to a lack of sanding or salting the roads.  I grew up in Edmonton but this shit is ridiculous. Winter is coming.

The temperature has really started to dip in the last while.  A couple weeks ago, I could read a book and eat lunch outside comfortably without a jacket.  Those days are over.  Winter is coming.

Everyone knows it.  Winter is coming.