Saturday 11/16/02                      My First English Student

            Today was my first day to teach Stephanie, an 8-year-old referred to me by my cooking classmate Lisa who was going home for good and needed someone to take over.  When she’d asked me if I was looking to teach English, I’d said “Sort of,” and wasn’t too thrilled when she said the girl was only eight.  But she assured me the girl was really smart and the lessons laid back, “it’s just playing with her,” and finally when she said the pay was 800/hour, I said Sure.  Most of the ads I’d seen were for 500-600/hour, people with years of experience and TESL certification, and for pain-in-the-ass bushibans--after-school school.  Stella and JiaLan both taught young bushiban classes and said it’s exhausting, basically babysitting, and that they end up yelling in Chinese since the kids don’t understand English anyway.

            The mother who I’d been communicating with, Erica, sounded a little um, intense.  She’s enrolled Stephanie in French school in addition to regular Chinese classes and has her taking private lessons for Japanese, Spanish and English.  She said I’m to wash my hands each time upon arriving, and if I ever feel the slightest bit sick, don’t come; claiming “Stephanie” is extremely sensitive to germs.

When Erica answered the door I was surprised at how young and pretty she looked.  She immediately told me to leave my shoes outside.  Lisa had told me they were wealthy but still I wasn’t prepared for the gorgeous apartment.  Huge Sony flatscreen TV in the living room, drool.  In fact flatscreens seemed to be everywhere.  I even saw a huge flatscreen TV set into the wall in Stephanie’s room.  For all the schooling they put this girl through, they actually let her have an awesome TV in front of her bed?  What are they thinking??  Well, maybe her mother has it pre-programmed with only Discovery and educational shows in five different languages.

            Obediently I went straightaway into the bathroom (Erica told me which one I was to use) where shelves on both sides were full of Hello Kittys in different outfits.  They were so cute, it was like a store and I just wanted to start picking them up and squeezing them.  But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a nanny-cam somewhere in the lot, so I resisted. 

As I’d been told, Stephanie wasn’t shy at all, but Lisa said their biggest assessment for a teacher was how well you got along with her and whether she liked your “teaching style”, so I was just a little nervous.  Lisa told me to smile a lot--she’s very bubbly and energetic by nature and Erica kept moaning what a loss she was.  So I grinned ear to ear the whole 3 hours and kept my voice jolly (like I was recording for CyberFakeName).  Stephanie had tons of books on all different subjects and as we chatted, whenever she asked “What’s ___?” at a word I said, I’d have her write it down on her notecards.   The hardest part was keeping her attention—she kept fidgeting and grabbing little toys lying around and showing them to me.  She was definitely smart though and her English miles better than those I-Lan third graders.  It was a long three hours; I kept checking the clock.  Toward the end Erica gave us sandwiches for lunch. To boost her confidence I told her I’d just “taught some other kids her age in I-Lan” this week and that Stephanie’s level was much higher.  She smiled knowingly.  I left not sure what they thought of me or how it went, but at least she asked me to come back.