End of Summer

All this week, my Facebook Memories have been reminding me that Red and I left the States three years ago this week. It has been fun seeing our adventures of navigating our new life in Beijing flashing across my screen each morning.

This was a big day for me.

In only five years of marriage, Red and I have changed jobs over a dozen times, visited nine different countries and lived in three of them. When we moved to Vietnam, we didn't even have jobs lined up. We just hopped on a plane confident that "we'll figure it out when we get there."

Even watching us from far, people should pretty easily be able to observe that neither Red nor I are scared of change. We definitely have things that concern us, but walking into the unknown is not one of them. And when you choose to live in another culture, that is a valuable quality to possess. An adventure into the unknown is thrown at us almost every time we step out of our house. It takes a long time to learn all the intricacies of another culture. We have learned that we must be extremely flexible and just go along with almost any mystery, confusion or change that is thrown at us.

I am experiencing a bit of change in my home right now. Summer has come to an end. As a teacher, this carries special significance. All the kids are headed back to school. However, this affects me in a different way than traditional teachers.

In this part of the world, kids go to school for much longer hours than in Western countries. And for most of these kids, even when they are not in school, they are still taking supplementary classes, extra lessons, tutoring appointments, advanced skills training, and many more things. 

When I was teaching in the classroom in Beijing, on Monday mornings I would often ask the students what they did over the weekend. I eventually stopped asking that question because the answer was always the same.

"On Saturday, I had an English class, a math class, and piano lesson. Then after lunch, I had another math class, a swimming class, and a calligraphy class. Then I did homework until I went to bed. On Sunday, I got up early to do homework until my school placement tutor came at ten. Then after lunch, I had my piano recital, Chinese class, and culture class."

These kids also have similar stories about what they do after school each day. It is almost always more classes and doing homework. I feel so sorry for them. The classes and stress never stop. It is work work work all the time.

Now, I am one of the teachers that many of these kids meet with after school and on weekends. I no longer work in the school system. I provide them with part of their supplemental English education. I spend months getting to know the kids and their learning patterns, how to get them to respond, how to draw them out and how to best teach them. Every lesson is individualized for that student. And a couple of times a year, it all changes.

Because I am an extra teacher in their already cramped schedule, things could change at any time. If a parent decides their kid needs to take another math class, they have to find a way to fit it into their schedule. So, occasionally, one of my students disappears. Although, I never know why. It could be a scheduling conflict or they feel like they have met the objective they were trying to achieve through classes with me. It could be because they don't like my style and sought out another teacher. Either way, I am never told. They just disappear one day. It's sometimes sad when a student I have really grown to enjoy falls off my schedule. There is never even an opportunity to say goodbye.

This month is one of the times when things really get shaken up. I may not be a school teacher, but the school schedule does affect me. I can only teach classes in the evenings and on the weekends because that is when the kids are free to take extra classes. And this month all the kids returned to school from their summer break. This means, their summer schedule has been disrupted and everything has to be redone to accommodate the new school year. New classes and teachers mean new challenges that must be met by their extra classes. This means every family re-assesses their educational needs. So, even though I do not work in a school, the lives of every one of my students are in transition. This means massive rescheduling happens. 

Almost overnight, half of my students are gone and replaced with new ones. I get new students all the time, but it is generally one here and there. In the fall, I get a bunch at once. And the ones I have grown to love over the last year are just gone with no notice. No one ever says, "This will be our last class together." They just disappear.

I know regular school teachers get new students every year, but on the last day of school each year, they know their students are moving on. They can say goodbye and are mentally prepared for it. When I get a new student, I don't know if they will be a part of my life for the next three weeks or the next three years. And I won't know until they disappear. It sucks.

Some kids, I am happy to see fall off my schedule, but there a few I genuinely miss and want to be able to follow up and see where their lives take them. But I'm getting used to it. I love my job and would not want to do anything else.

Well, if I have to work.

---

Today's post was inspired by the writing prompt, "It was the end of summer."