Teaching (if that's what you want to call it)

My first day of class was within my first twenty-four hours in the country. I arrived in Hanoi three days late because of bad weather in NS and lost a few days in transit. I was unable to properly prepare for my class, let alone adjust to my new surroundings! But like so many things in life, I was thrown into this situation unexpectedly and had to make the best of it.

I got the job before leaving Canada and was hoping that I was getting everything that I was promised. It took a lot of blind faith to come to Vietnam on the promise that a job was available in a school I knew nothing about, in a city I've never been. As luck would have it, everything worked out and I was fortunate to get exactly what I was promised.

My new job was teaching English in a banking academy in Hanoi, aptly named "Academy of Banking, Hanoi." I came to teach supper intermediate English to university students in an intensive four-year English program. This program teaches business students everything they need to know to begin a career in banking but entirely in English with mostly native English teachers. They will also have the opportunity to travel to England during the fourth year of the course to study business in the University of Sunderland, earning a degree from the world renowned university. The students that I am currently teaching are in the first year of this program and are only studying English. And that works for me because I'm an English teacher, DEFINITELY NOT a business teacher!

The first year of the program is focussed only on improving their English fluency so they should be able to understand the lectures in the following years. The classes are five days a week, two hours a day and lots of homework. The goal for the first year is that students are supposed to become fluent in English by the end of the year. Notice how I said, "should be" and "supposed to." Many of the students are not at the appropriate English level and should not have been allowed to enroll in the program, but money talks. Are you kidding? In a communist country? Money is everything! There are other students who are in the class solely because their parents want them to be there. Mom and Dad don't mind sponsoring their son or daughter so long as they get the diploma, albeit if they take an extra year or two. Students that don't care and parents that care even less: such is the dilemma for any teacher I suppose.

I started working on the 5th of January at the beginning of the second term. I get a few more months to mold these students into well oiled English speaking machines. I'll be seeing most of them on a daily basis and hope to develop a personal relationship with them to better understand the Vietnamese way of thinking and to see the values of this new society. I'll also take valuable class time to ask questions about Vietnam and get them to help me with my Vietnamese pronunciation. I know that they are looking at me to do the same: to copy my Western way of thinking and acting. I just hope they don't pick up my East Hants accent.