The enumerated shortcomings of a newly retired American schoolteacher (Part 1 in a series)

Chapter One: Laziness

I have fond memories of my first year as a teacher. When sixth period would roll around every day, I would pretend to teach something, the students would pretend to learn it, and we would go on with our lives. I would spend the rest of the period with a broom that I used as an air guitar and rock out to The Killers or some other band that I would blast over the ipod speaker, my most valued educational tool, and they would go on with their work, annoyed but gradually learning to ignore me. The bell would ring, and they would leave. I would stamp some papers with a custom made stamp that proclaimed “this is the most original paper I have ever read.” This message was a lie. Often, I never read those papers.

I was never a very good teacher. This was mostly because I refused to take the job seriously, and I always insisted on having fun, sometimes at the expense of the educational experience I was paid to provide. But my idiosyncrasies as a teacher, despite the personal shortcomings they revealed, were ironically what attracted many of my students to my classroom. I was always surprised when the pain-in-the-ass student who made my life hell all day long would inevitably say at the end of the year “this is like, my favorite class” like some sort of awkward thankyou or reluctant religious confession. As one student put it in a note she wrote to me at the end of the year “from your choice of wardrobe to your unabashed refusal to wash your car, your whole demeanor was something completely foreign to me. You as my English teacher were someone I simply couldn't understand for a very long time, maybe not until it was too late in the year for it to matter.” That pretty much sums it up.

When some friends of mine in Kathmandu suggested that I volunteer at a remote school near the beginning of the Everest trek, I hesitated thinking that I could screw these kids up really bad. American kids are resilient; they’re used to the lack of sanity displayed by their adult counterparts in the schools. Nepali children might not bounce back from being exposed to an English teacher like me. But when my friend Ritik voiced his intention to teach them the theme song from “Family Ties” I figured I might fit in with plans like that.

On the morning when we were supposed to leave for the village of Deusa, I read the following article in “The Himalayan” an English-language newspaper in Kathmandu.

Wild Boar in School
NAWAL PARASI—A school was shut on Monday afternoon after a wild boar suddenly came out of the jungle and ran amok on the school premises. Teachers of Bhimsen High School in Devchuli vacated the staff room at the sight of the wild boar. Though the wild boar was overpowered, nobody has come to collect it from the forest office or Chitwan National Park, said a school source.

As my companions for this educational exchange mused on what mishaps they could expect out of this adventure, I pointed out how funny I thought it was that the writer of this article used the phrase “wild boar” repetitively, when many synonyms exist. “You are an English teacher” said the girl. “Not any more” I replied, and as they discussed the various logistics and their apprehensions regarding the trip, I spaced out and quietly mused on how funny I thought it was that the three brands of bottled water that sat on our table at the cafe were called “Thirst-Pi,” “Thirst-TA,” and “Aquasoon.” That shit cracks me up.

Chapter 2: Mental garbage

I paid attention whenever the girl talked. She mentioned many of the things that she had heard about the school and cited the informational literature we had recently received from the British woman who was orchestrating our volunteerism, mentioning that she was particularly interested in this sentence "government teachers receive some training, though the value of this is dubious, especially on observing teaching methods, which tend to be very traditional and using a lecture learn by rote style." She wondered what we would be expected to do as products of western schools. Would we be teaching the teachers?

She introduced herself as Eloise. Eloise, Eloise from Australia, Eloise. I recited this in my head in the manner of someone trying to remember the name of someone recently introduced. My mind ran through the permutations of her name as she talked. Eloise. "El." "eez?" My mind turned to some ridiculous lyrics from a rap song I remembered from college-- "now flippin the cell that's right i had to call up L. yo L what up? i hit, what else, plus dope, say word." Although I could not have told you the name of that song nor the artist nor any of the lyrics that followed, it helped me to remember Eloise's name. Unfortunately, like so much trash littering the trail on the hike to the school, that stupid song was always there, unwelcome, whenever I thought of her name after that. I sang those lyrics in my head as she talked. Although I didn't hear what she was saying, it was nice to watch her lips move.

Chapter 2.5 : Fear

Eloise doesn't like airplanes. In Nepal, the frequent flier has good reason for this. Earlier this season, on the flight to Lukla I got my climbing helmet out of my backpack and buckled it tightly for the landing, causing not laughter (the desired response) but consternation among my fellow worried travellers. They gave me looks as if to say "I wish I had a helmet." It is not uncommon on these flights to be extremely relieved upon landing safely, as if continuing to breathe was somehow unexpected. On this flight I looked out the window, completely enthralled, only to notice that we were flying over foothills and I could see below me..... no wait...is it? Yes, that's a goat. We weren't very high off the ground, which was unnerving for Eloise who was now hiding her head inside her scarf trying to ignore the vomiting child in the adjacent seat. Child psychologists claim that when a child of a certain age closes their eyes in a game of "peekaboo" they are actually entering a sort of epistemological dilemma wherein the world actually disappears and ceases to exist when they close their eyes. That's the type of useless knowledge one acquires in teacher training-- the sort of thing that has no practical application whatever to the modern school environment. The useless nature of this fact notwithstanding, it is my theory that Eloise was trying to eliminate the "gravity" of the flight to Kangil by playing "peekaboo" until we landed safely, at which point everyone started clapping. Then it was safe for Eloise to open her eyes and allow the world to come back to life.

Chapter 3: Short attention Span

We then started the trek to Deusa which would take about 6 hours, all told. Strangely enough, we passed only one other school in the time it took to walk what must have been about 12 miles or so. To me, this meant that many of the students we would meet at the Deusa school would be walking six miles each day to receive their education, reminding me of everyone's grandpa who claims "you kids don't have any idea how good you've got it" and citing his daily march 12 miles through the snow uphill each way, or so the story goes.

When I tire of walking, which takes about 20 minutes, I ask a local man where we are. When he doesn't understand me, I ask "are we there yet? Are we in Deusa?" When I need to simlify it further, I point to the ground and say "Deusa?" and he says "yes, Deusa." I would repeat this query several times with the same response as we walked for the next 5 hours, all the while in Deusa. I probably should’ve read the promotional informational literature we were given which states “the village covers a very large area, taking maybe 3-4 hours to walk from one end to the other.” But I have a short attention span.

Chapter 4: Judgmental
We were guided along the trail by several teachers from the school who probably should’ve been at work. Who would teach the children? What about the children? Don’t these people care about the children? They introduced themselves and we noticed that most of their names ended in “Rai” which meant that they were from the Rai tribe, ethnic group or whatever. They were not Sherpas, which meant that they were probably even more impoverished than the porters up-valley toward the Everest massif, who make a good deal of money from tourists like us.
I’ve heard it said that there are three national religions in Nepal—Hinduism, Buddhism, and Tourism. When we finally arrived at the place where we would lodge ourselves for the next 7 days, we found out that the hotel proprietors adhered to none of these, but rather had been introduced (rather unfortunately in my opinion) to the religion of the white imperialists, Christianity. Unwilling to give their newborn a traditional name, but apparently completely willing to make her a pariah for life, they had christened her “Evangelina.” I knew they were not Hindu when I did not observe the many depictions of the various deities of Hinduism, as is typical in Hindu households. Later when we discovered a huge hairy spider right above the bed where I was to spend the night, we asked for assistance from the hotel proprietor to help this lovely creature on its way. He saw the spider on the wall, and promptly removed his shoe which he used to end the inherently miserable life of said spider. This is when I learned that they weren’t Buddhists.

Chapter 5: Arrogant
What followed the next day was possibly one of the strangest experiences of my life.
We walk 45 minutes to the school accompanied by one of the teachers, Tej Rai, who has insisted on guiding us. As we approach the schoolhouse , we notice that many students are lined up on a soccer field sized grassy area enclosed by the school buildings which resemble the “portable” trailer style classrooms that everyone complained about at Salinas High, except they’re made out of mud. “Why are the students lined up there like that?” we ask. Tej Rai, an English teacher whose English sounded abysmal to us (like how I imagine an American Spanish teacher must sound to the ears of a Spaniard) replied that the students who come to school dirty or late must line up like this every day. “That’s a lot of dirt late kids” we remarked as we plodded down trail. We found out soon that Tej Rai had lied to us. Those students were lined up like that so that they could meet us.

We were led into the middle of the courtyard where there were 300 or so children of various ages arranged in lines from youngest to eldest standing at attention and awaiting the wisdom of the western teachers. Tej Rai motioned to two chairs in front of the whole assembly and we were told to sit. The headmaster, Yadav Sir, a stern looking man as headmasters go, said some things in Nepali which elicited smiles and laughter from the assembled kids who relaxed their attentive stances a little. Then, one by one, like some scene from an ancient past reminiscent of a lost time when western explorers first reached a distant and forbidden land, the children marched forward and gave us gifts. First, they draped around our necks a piece of ceremonial cloth which had been blessed by a lama. This was my fourth blessed cloth this month, so I wasn’t surprised, but the gifts kept coming as children of various ages marched timidly in our direction. Next they bestowed upon our itchy necks wreaths of flowers picked from local bushes too high upon the branches to be reached by the ravenous goats of the region. One by one, more flower wreaths were placed around our necks until I was actually worried I would have an allergic reaction and my airway would close up. It reminded me very much of a scene from a favorite movie of mine, Joe versus the Volcano, where the strange natives of an island doomed by an angry volcano shower Joe Banks with gifts before making him jump into the lava to save their island from the wrath of “Waponi Woo.” I felt a sense of impending doom.

Chapter 6: Non-conformist
The students then marched to their various classrooms to the furious beat of a drum, and we were ushered into the staff lounge where we sat with the other teachers with no particular sense of urgency. Eloise picked up a Nepali-English dictionary, and performed what I like to call a “dictionary-dip” wherein the “dipper” opens the book to a random page and points at a word with his or her eyes closed. This word will foretell your immediate future. The word was “non-conformist.”

Eloise asks Mohan Shrestha, another English teacher educated in Darjeeling, what the plan is for the day and he replies with frantic hand gestures “no, no, no, no plan.” This is more in line with my philosophy, so I’m ok with it, but Eloise looks mortified. Mohan says “ok, lets go” and we march over to a small mud room with a tin roof and a big red 8 painted on the wall. It’s the eighth grade, but the students range in age from 13 to 18. As we enter, all of the students stand and greet us in unison with something that translates to “hello master.” Mohan introduces us in Nepali, tells them to sit and then grabs me by the hand to take me elsewhere. Eloise and I attempt a protest, not wanting to be separated in this strange place, but he insists and I depart for the ninth grade as she sends me a look of desperation which communicated “don’t leave me here” very clearly and urgently. But I was dragged away to another classroom to do what I do so well-- torturing students without having developed a plan in advance.

The first step is to "access prior knowledge." I could tell from the blank looks and vacant stares that this wasn't very extensive. The first step is to "access prior knowledge." I could tell from the blank looks and vacant stares that this wasn't very extensive. I wrote some basic questions up on the blackboard and had them write the answers.
What is your name?
Where do you live?
Do you have brothers and sisters?
How many animals do you have?

These were things which they all had in common as the Rai men and women are breeders and no family is smaller than 10 people. They also seem to have extensive knowledge of animals. This discussion led to a lesson on singular versus plural because none of the children seems to have a very good grip on these concepts. I wrote the following sentence on the board as an example: I have three chickens, four goats, one cat, one dog, two cows and four…” I paused in writing the sentence when I realized that the plural of “ox” is not “oxes” but “oxen.” Dammit! These are the kinds of things that really confuse a non-native English speaker. A bell rang and another teacher arrived to take my place.

I went to the next classroom, as it is the custom for the teachers to move from class to class rather than making the students move around, and wrote Sonnet 14 (“shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) on the board. I made them copy it and say it in unison, which seemed like a good way to work on pronunciation. When Mohan arrived and saw what I had done he said “John, I would like to discuss your teaching.” I had heard this several times before from principals and department chairs, and it was usually not a good thing. Once, it heralded the arrival of the secret service. Another time, a student who thought me to be irresponsible reported to the principal that I had delivered a sexist joke. In the meeting with my principal that ensued I defended myself in the manner of Alberto Gonzales claiming “I do not recall” over and over when questioned as to what I had said. I never admitted that I said “with so many battered women out there, why am I always eating mine plain?” Dear reader, lest you decide to judge me, I’ll swear it was related to our curriculum.

Turns out Mohan wanted suggestions. He led me out into the courtyard for lunch which consisted of a giant pile of oranges. As testament to the landfill of mental garbage that clutters my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking about an incident from a tv show I had recently witnessed. Mohan droned on about planning and teaching and such and I thought about this woman on television being asked to name a word that rhymes with orange.
Interviewer: name a word that rhymes with orange.
Woman: Ummm…. Morange?
Interviewer: ok. Can you define ‘morange’?
Woman: more oranges? Please?
I looked up from my pile of peels and Mohan was looking at me having just asked a question, awaiting my answer. “Umm, yeah. I think you’ve got a good school here.” He looked at me skeptically and we ate “morange” is silence.

Chapter 7: Busy

Luckily, the next day was a holiday. Of the seven or eight days we spent in Deusa, at least half were holidays. They work hard there, but they can play hard too.
We were brought to a big rock outcropping above the school where they believe holy things reside. There was a tarp with bamboo poles at the ends which created a makeshift shelter which sheltered several “Shamans” from the unforgiving mountain sun. The Shamans wore ceremonial garb consisting of a feather headdress, long robes with bells attached and colorful strings of beads. Before Rob And Ritik arrived, both ER doctors from Seattle, these holy men were the healers for the village. When we arrived at the festival they were busy healing themselves with copious amounts of “chang” a homemade rice beer, which isn’t bad—not bad at all.

Rob was thinking a lot about his ex girlfriend-- a situation which I completely understand because I too had something irreparably stuck in my head-- "now flippin the cell that's right i had to call up L. yo L what up? i hit, what else, plus dope, say word." So when he wanted to talk about it, I would indulge him. But on this occasion, fueled by chang and the unbridled enthusiasm of a truly strange experience, Rob said something like "it's a unique opportunity we have here, and I can't sit here brooding. So I say 'fuck it' and start dancing. I never dance." It was a sentiment which met with my approval. Ritik and Rob danced with the Nepali women who clapped out a rhythm and sang the "yosum pididi" song which, in 1999 on my first visit to Nepal, I imagined translated to "let's all be cheery/let's all be cheery/ smoke ganja on Naya Kanga/ let's all be cheery." I couldn't help but think-- hey it's midweek, shouldn't you people be working? Haven't you heard that famous Puritan-American parable about the lazy farmer who says he'll sew his seeds later? As farmers, these Rai people would know--perhaps it isn't really true.

Chapter 8: Unholy

K. P. Rai took me up to the caves where there were some ceremonies going on to stop the landslides (the Nepali equivalent of Waponi Woo) which had plagued Deusa in the past. K.P. (whose name is a lot longer, but unpronouncable by Americans so he used this convenient abbreviation) escorted me up to the caves and gave me a tour sort of. Her paused in his explanations to say (and I quote) “John, this is God” as if he were introducing a familiar friend. He led me down into the entrance of the rock cave, through a dark and forbidding maw of rock into a rather unimpressive cranny through which sunlight filtered and some sticks of incense burned, the sharpened end of the sticks stabbed into an orange. Flower petals were strewn and butter lamps burned next to God. But as is so typical of God, he (or she) didn’t actually do anything. We walked a few meters to another cave entrance with more butter lamps and some Rais bowed and prostrated themselves once again in front of a dirty rock face. To them, everything is God.

To be continued.... (if I feel like it).