Almost a decade ago, a hometown friend of mine pointed out
to me, in a spirit of annoyance, that I was always declaring that such and such
day we happened to be meeting up was actually a very profound and poetically
important moment filled with symbolic richness and figurative depth, and that
such excited grand pronouncements were getting old.
However, I've taken a month off from posting, so I figure it's
time to annoy people with poetry again.
Thus, today at 5:30 I concluded 21 straight months of teaching the
most advanced afternoon listening and speaking class at my language company.
Notice the qualifier "afternoon." I'll actually be
teaching it in the morning now, instead of business. I will still be
teaching in the afternoon as well, but this time, I'll be down at level 3, just
like old times.
Basically, not that much is changing in the immediate future.
That said, they're on their way. I've been thankful to have worked
this past half year teaching a 9-5:30 schedule of only the most advanced
students at my school, but I knew it couldn't last forever, and I knew I didn't
want it to. As I've said before, my life is in a decent stasis, but
besides my own reading, learning, writing practice, teaching practice, and general
self-improvement and enjoyment of life, my current career isn't taking me
anywhere (that I can see at the moment). There's no chance for promotion,
and although I've been told I'm pretty good at what I do, I'm aware of the
market rates for this type of job. Also, other schools I've heard of tend
to pay less, and to work at the ones that pay more, I'd have to spend lots of
money and time getting extra certification so I could teach micro-managed
classes where every single activity and grammar point is planned down to the minute (literally...trust me, I mean the
word 'literally' literally). If you're thinking about education in
general, that sounds like a potentially reasonable strategy for teaching.
But when you don't make much more than the new fast food minimum wage in
San Francisco, you don't get paid for preparation time and you're already
teaching a full 8 hours a day, it's kind of hard to work up the energy to plan
every minute of your lesson. On top of that, the thing I love most about
teaching is the magic and knowledge that arise from improvisation and going
with the flow in the moment: a student brings up a topic, another student
responds, I have an idea, and a new activity is born in an instant. I
have planned classes down to the minute in the past, and they never go well,
because few things in life go as planned anyway. I like to go into class
knowing what I'm doing, but with plenty of wiggle room to change direction if I
see fit.
Why am I bringing this up now?
Remember that candidate who promised he would be the
"greatest jobs president on God's earth" or something to that effect?
Well, he became the president, and now I can tell you about some American
occupations that are in jeopardy. God: was he telling the truth about
your creation? I mean, if he actually creates thousands and thousands of
jobs that aren't based on destroying the planet and quality of human health and
life, then I guess I can't be that selfish about my impending vocational fate.
But as far as I can tell, the only thing that's changed on the job front
is that the government has ordered embassies to approve fewer student visas and
skilled worker visas, so our visa approvals have gone from 50% to 20%.
That means students who earnestly want to study with us are being denied
by our own government. You see, they don't want foreigners taking jobs
from Americans.... so they need to take jobs away from Americans who teach
foreigners. Those guys making those decisions will be gone in a decade
or so anyway, so I guess they don't care about the long-term gains of a pretty
basic concept known as "intellectual capital." America is
"exceptional" not just because of our tradition of rhetoric about hopes,
dreams, and miscegenation, but because immigrants, skilled workers and students
who come to the U.S. are way more friggin' driven than we 'natives'! They
are over-represented in patents, and we could go all night about inventive,
innovative, artistic, intellectual, and heroically brave contributions from
immigrants. What comes to mind immediately? Well, America had
mostly stopped innovating a long time ago, with industry giants trading
investments in research and development for short-term boosts in the value of
their stock price so CEO's could cash in their stock options. Luckily, there
was an incredibly timely revolution in technology, communication and reality
revolving around computers, and America happened to be very well positioned to
capitalize. America would have been crushed economically if it hadn't
gotten a head start with computer innovation. Who founded Intel? A
Hungarian refugee. Who built up Apple into America's most valuable
company? The son of a Syrian graduate student. Who the heck is Elon
Musk? Look it up. Where are you from? America? Do most
'Americans' even know who Amerigo Vespucci was?
How can America be great again? I advise our administration
to open a freaking book and learn a little about how it was great. It's a
pretty simple formula: welcome talent from everywhere in the world, and
eventually, inherent in the equation, you'll get the best innovations and
progress. If Hitler hadn't hated Jews, he might have conquered the world.
Instead, the (arguably) smartest German in history--and perhaps exhibit A
if the Germans (or Jews) actually made a silly existential case in Universal
Court for being the "master race" on Earth--also happened to be
Jewish, so he left, because he didn't like the idea of being slaughtered.
This man, Einstein, gave his intelligence to another country, which,
despite it's insane contradictions, was on the zig zag path toward human
harmony. He urged them to create an atomic bomb program, which created
the most devastating weapon ever. This weapon was used by our country
against innocents mixed in with monsters through no fault of their own, and was
never used against Hitler. However, it ensured he would never have had a
chance anyway. Who have we turned away now, perhaps to use their
intelligence against us?
These references to history are a simple reminder that these troubles
we face at my company aren't that large, but the results of shameful decisions
nevertheless. Next session, on Monday, we're cutting many classes, and
it's not just us. The whole industry is suffering directly for lack of
students. Many teachers are losing their classes. I am lucky for
now, as I still have my normal schedule for another month, before I
(theoretically) switch with another full-time teacher and teach at night for
half the session. We'll go over that bridge when we get there. I'm
not that thrilled about not only returning to nights and a split schedule, but
also having a 2 hour round-trip evening commute to Queens as opposed to the 20
minute round trip commute I had at the Upper West Side up until 6 months ago,
when I resented completing my day at 10 pm, just so I could earn enough money
to have a room, food, health insurance and a little fun. Luckily, I have
a month before that happens, and some extra fire to push me toward my true
goals in the writing realm, or whatever realm I'm moving into. Today we
read that comfort is the enemy of ambition, so perhaps this is the kick I
needed. I spent so long without stability that I've really relished any
sense of it that I could get in the past few years. Now that I've had it
a while, I feel like I should be doing something more.
Last night I visited a friend in Washington Heights. The
last time I saw him, we were in India. He's from Israel, but lives in
Germany. He's visiting New York City for a few weeks, and trying to get a
Fulbright Scholarship to study jazz guitar in America. He already has a
masters. I do remember him playing "Sweet Baby James" by a fire
in Vattakanal the night before we all went our separate ways after two weeks
traveling together.
I'd seen him briefly this past Sunday, and then on Wednesday he
invited me to dinner. He revealed it was Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.
I knew it was a "I don't have to move my car for street cleaning
holiday" the next day, but I'd forgotten why until he reminded me.
He cooked me food, we drank wine, and we reminisced and caught up.
I remembered aspects of travel and spirituality that had lain dormant for
a long time.
The symbolic importance of all of this is that two years after we
had last seen each other in India, I sent a message out on Facebook seeking any
help I could get in landing a teaching job in Japan. I didn't have any
experience, but I thought I could do it well. My friend from Israel
responded, saying he'd met a traveler in India who'd later taught in Japan, and
perhaps he could help me. That same traveler/intermediary eventually
connected me to a conversation club in Saitama, and my teaching journey began
from there.
I would say I'm wondering if that career which began back then is
about to conclude, but I'm not. I never intended to teach ESL as a
lifelong career, although I must say, it's hard to think of better ways to
spend your day than to direct/guide helpful creative activities in a room full
of people from different walks of life and various cultures. Will my
teaching career wrap up in a few months? Current immigration policy trends are obviously cause for
pessimism. Even without that, in the story of life, scenery, characters
and scripts must grow, move, expand, transform, and therefore, so must
schedules, jobs and sometimes even locations. If I've done anything in my
adulthood, learning how to embrace change would have to be near the top of the
list. I'm not sure what's up ahead with English language teaching to
international people. I will always teach in some form, even if that
form is writing, and I will always learn from people who have different life
experiences. It just might not be in a small classroom anymore.
I know you've heard similar claims from me before, so I understand
your skepticism. I didn't even think I'd be in this situation this long,
but, looking back, as usual, it all makes sense. So I know you'll believe
the book when you see it.
We did final presentations as we always do. A woman from
Japan taught us why Japanese people are punctual (and then explained that she
isn't very Japanese herself when a Chinese man pointed out that she's often
late) and organized. A Chinese woman taught us about their New Year's
traditions. A Colombian man taught us about a famous theater company he'd
worked for in his home country. A Hungarian woman taught us about her
home nation. A Polish woman taught us about her homeland. A Swiss
student taught us about opera singers (her father is famous, apparently), and
then showed off her pipes for all of us. I've taught her for 8 months,
which have been very up and down. At one point I had to debate with her
whether or not the speed of light was actually faster than the speed of sound,
and she has a Ph.D. in philosophy from a very respected university. But I'm
really happy she showed off her skills for us in the last thirty minutes of
class. Finally, a Chinese man taught us about ancient Chinese philosophy.
He wasn't the last act, but I enjoyed his the most. Every mention
of the I Ching and Qi Gong and Tao brought back too many memories to count.
My immediate future is in doubt, but it always is. I just
don't realize it all the time. It's the same for you, whether you know it
or not. But now that I realize I have even more volatility than usual on
the horizon, I take solace in the fact that it's already been a wild journey up
to now, and I have plenty of stories to tell.
I hope people are ready to listen. I'm aware they might not
be. That happens in class all the time. When the students ignore
you and keep talking, you yell a little louder. If that doesn't work, you
play with the lights. That almost always gets their attention. But
if that still doesn't get them to be quiet and listen to you, you just yell,
"Everybody shut up and listen to me!" and that usually gets some
laughs. And then I can tell them everything they need to know
