Learning English is a Bit Like...Ummmm...Knitting?!

Image via Wikipedia

Here in Israel, before being a staying at home mum I taught EFL. Yes, I was a teacher. But after Maya was born I gave up teaching because I didn't want my school problems to interfere with my job as a mum. And (mainly)because I hated being a teacher in Israel. The system is a pile of crap, the students are wild etc, etc. Anyhow, I have here and there a few private pupils, which I teach mainly because I don't want to loose my hand at teaching. One never knows...
So I have this one high school student, a very nice girl whose knowledge of English is somewhere near...zero. Nothing. Nada. Ziltch. She has no talent for it, she's also dyslectic, she doesn't really want to study, only to chat and send SMS's. I've been teaching her for an year and a half now and her mother insist that I continue. Yesterday evening I was at their place, preparing to start the lesson. Dialog:
She: What are we going to do today?"
Me: Well, we'll continue to work at your reading comprehension skills and then we'll check blah, blah...
She: But I don't want to (whiney voice) !!!It's booooring....
Me: I know honey, I know...
(Whay I wanted to say instead was: "I am your English teacher! I am here to teach you English! If you wanted an entertainer, why didn't you ask your mother for a clown???")
Me: (patting her hand): I know it is hard for you now, but it'll get better, I promise. Look,me, for example. I took up knitting. And it is very difficult for me, and frustrating and boring, because I don't knit well and I can knit only a scarf at this stage. But if I practice, I'll get better and I'll knit socks and hats and dolls for my daughter, and it'll be fun...
She: (unconvinced and with a smug smile on her face, directed to my incapability to knit):O.K., O.K., but could we do writing instead."
And so "we"ended by writing writing letters, she wrote them in Hebrew and I, for two bloody hours, I translated and explained and exemplified (meanwhile, she kept cheking her mobile phone for SMSs every couple of minutes).

The park where Maya and me are going has its sandpit near a school, a religious one, a very noisy one, like all Israeli schools are. Today, while we were playing in the shade we heard a commotion and we watched as a teacher scurried along the school yard, followed by a mother (short, fat, jeans, white t-shirt, with a toddler proped on her hip) that was shouting something at the teacher. I didn't understand the words, but her tone told us she wasn't congratulating the teacher for her good work. After them came running a girl shouting really loudly:"Don't touch my teacher! Don't touch my teacher!" And them I understood what was all about. Today was the last day of school for the primary schools, the pupils received their certificates, and it seemed to me that the mother wasn't pleased at all with her offspring's school results. And who is to blame for that? The teacher, of course ...


Well, this is one of the reasons I decided to quit teaching. Sometimers my students scared me, but most of the time I was terrified by their parents...From time to time, in the media would appear an article about a parent that had beat a teacher up - no, I'm not kidding, and I think I was really lucky it didn't happen to me. Don't get me wrong...I really enjoyed teaching, but it was absolutely destroying me. Every day I had to battle my way to the end of the school day, and I felt drained, powerless. I tried to do a good jod and they rewarded me by giving me more discipline challenged classes - because you have a way with them, they told me; by giving me all kind of extra curricular activities - because you don't have small kids at home. During the year when I was pregnant with Maya I was terrified that all the shouting and stress will afect her, so my husband bought me a Tibetan bell or chime, something that you wear like a pendant around your neck and it reaches your belly-buttom, and when you move, the baby inside you hears the soothing sound of the bell.
Weel, the event that I saw in the park triggered memories, not very pleasant ones.
After Maya was born, I decided my sanity in more important than the money I earned (pityful wages, no doubt) and I quitted.
About the other reasons, I'll tell you some other time...