Comments on: i’m a real fake teacher now

By: Jason Mathias

Jason Mathias — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 12:01:34 +0000

Hey Pouw, I must confess that I have been far too absent from reading this stuff. It’s great writing, and I definitely plan to sit with a cup of coffee and give a good readthrough. I was just wondering if it would be possible for you to switch the Drew Casper link from his wikipedia page to this excellent Urban Dictionary page: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ego+fap

Good to see your wit is unfazed.

By: kato

kato — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:29:32 +0000

by the way, i second what your dad said. don’t go to med school.

By: t.h. pouw

t.h. pouw — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:56:19 +0000

This one is new for me, I guess I have been away too long.

By: Andrew Pouw

Andrew Pouw — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:50:34 +0000

Straight up in English. I didn’t see a Rice Bin, Dad, but I did see a Yellow Dog – I’m pretty sure that’s perverted, right?

By: t.h. pouw

t.h. pouw — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:14:13 +0000

Is 饭桶(Rice bin, meaning idiot in Chinese) one of the names too?

By: kato

kato — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 15:50:38 +0000

not the ACA voice! i do remember that; they best respect it!

regarding the names…were they “cow man” and “water bin” in chinese or in english?

By: Andrew Pouw

Andrew Pouw — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 05:15:01 +0000

@ Jason: You noticed that? Hm…I’ll admit that I do enjoy every chance to use it, haha.

@ Michael: It’s true that other European foreign teachers are making much more money, and that I am pretty well qualified for the job. But titles on paper don’t always necessarily translate to experience on the ground – or, put another way, I might be overqualified for it. I would like nothing better than to stimulate with my students a cross-cultural inquiry into how 19th century colonialism is still influencing education in Asia today, or some other such high-falootin’ BS that I am very capable of leading, but it’s taking some thinking on my part to come up with enough word games to just get them to understand what I’m saying. And that is a skill to learn, as well… Thanks for your continual faith in me, though, Mike.

@ Cindy and Darren: Harry Potter isn’t the worst of it…yesterday I had a kid named Stupid, one named Cow Man, and another named Water Bin.

@ Darren more specifically: English teaching abroad is currently under the influence of one particular methodology called Communicative Language Teaching. It more or less does away with teaching grammar as a focus and tries to get each student to practice speaking as much as possible, which actually does make this job pretty easy (although it’s also still easy to be a terrible teacher). This week for introductions I’ve been doing Two Truths and a Lie with them, and forcing them to speak by having them pass a ball around. They seem to love it whenever somebody gets smacked in the head. I do not discourage the practice. : )

@ Nhi: Well, it’s either their mind or mine being shaped, we’ll see! Thanks!

By: Nhi

Nhi — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:26:28 +0000

ah pouw i wish i were somewhere foreign shaping young minds…keep up with the blogging, you are very good at it!

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:16:52 +0000

Andrew,

You would be amazed at how easy teaching kids is once you get the hang of it. You just have to learn to live off of their energy.

Also, I was wondering what game you played with your students. I’m curious at the differences in how languages are taught outside of the US.

By the way, I vote you try and convince at least one student to change their english name to something grander, like umm… Darren. Ha ha ha

By: Cindy

Cindy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:51:30 +0000

OH and I like how one boy calls himself Harry Potter