How Not to be a Jerk to Your Foreign Language Teacher – World Teachers’ Day
October 5th, is World Teachers’ Day. When I set out to write this I was really just looking to express my regrets about being part of the bullying of a foreign language teacher who came to my high school when I was at the worst of ages. I didn’t realize that there is such a day until I had written most of this post and thought to myself “huh, bet there’s an international teacher day or something like that, feels relevant, yeah, let’s mention that!”.
My timing is amazing for other reasons too, but we’ll get to that at the end.
For now, I want to talk about how I was an asshole to one of my foreign high school Spanish teachers, how I very much I regret that, why 14 year olds should not be allowed out of their cages, and why the teachers of 14 year olds should be lauded, given chocolate1 and raises.
14 year olds are the worst
More than half my life ago, when I was in high school in Upstate New York, one of our graduation requirements – as is common all over the world – was at least two years of a second language. My home town is kinda tiny – to add to the ages old cliche, there were indeed more cows than people. Academically the school wasn’t spectacular and was forced to work with a craptastic budget. When I was in 7th grade I had taken a state mandated fancy schmancy math test. I was always terrible at math but for some reason I happened to do pretty well on this particular test.
In all their wisdom, the school district decided that those of us who performed well on this math exam would, inexplicably, be offered places in something called “accelerated Spanish”. At this time, our schools (or mine, at least) did not offer second languages to students below 8th grade, and I knew nothing of Spanish beyond saying hello, goodbye, a few colors, and counting to 15.
Suddenly I’m taking 2nd year Spanish.
When 8th grade rolled around I was enrolled in 9th grade Spanish, I thought I was pretty cool, being one of the “smart kids” who got sent on to the advanced class. All of the older students – the 9th graders – had had a year of Spanish already, and I and the six other “smart kids” were thrust into this pretty unwelcoming environment saddled with an angry French teacher dealing with a class she didn’t want, and the abject douchiness of 9th graders.2
The year I started Spanish was the same year that the French program at our high school was cut due to budgetary issues. Incidentally, the football team got new equipment. Who’da thought?
I was a bit disappointed, albeit only a little. At 13 I didn’t care that much about learning anything other than band and history, but if I had to choose I knew I would choose French.
Nope.
This change also meant that our French teacher (yes, we had one), had to switch to Spanish (neither her native language nor her 2nd strongest). So we were, like I said, stuck with a cranky old lady who hated her job and an overcrowded room loaded with pubescent douchebags hell bent on making the lives of everyone in the room just a few degrees less nice. The 7 of us hid where we could, but since it’s a language class, the teacher is basically always channeling the Dark Eye of Sauron and you can’t truly hide from that guy.
I remember day one. We walk in and this lady, clearly not loving her life at that moment, spouting off in fast Spanish,3 talking to the 9th grade students who had already had a year, more or less ignoring the fact that we “smart kids” knew about as much Spanish as we could learn from the Taco Bell commercials.
Yo quiero.
No me gusta.
Anyway, that year was objectively crap, and that teacher left at the end to go teach somewhere that still taught French, like Canada or Haiti or something, but I had been left with a moderate(ly awful) level of Spanish.
Suddenly, I too was 14…
Because I was in “advanced Spanish”, I was then bumped up to the next year, as would make sense, at 14, to my 2nd year of Spanish – the 3rd year course.
By and large, I was not, at least as far as I would say, a super douchey teenager. Still, at 14 it’s hard to avoid the call of the asshole and this year we were given more bullyfodder than you can shake a stick at – a poor, unfortunate Spanish teacher from Mexico – a native speaker, for a change, which at the time we didn’t think much of, with a thick accent and mediocre English pronunciation.
Hola Señor León
I never learned his first name. In the US it isn’t customary for students to ever refer to their teachers by their first name, unless that teacher is a hippie-dippie weirdo intent on breaking the system in true Robin Williams in Dead Poet Society style, so I never learned it – just as I honestly don’t recall the first names of the majority of my high school teachers.
Señor León was from Mexico, as I said, and he had that super thick accent when he spoke English and white rural kids with no exposure to non rural white people can be kinda racist. As I hope we have established by now, 14 year olds are huge wastes of carbon.
14 year olds offer very little to society. They can’t work, they don’t drive themselves anywhere, they don’t pay taxes, they get in the way, they’re not cute anymore, they’re socially and physically awkward, they make mortifying wardrobe decisions, they like terrible music, they’re terrible to each other and everyone around them… Seriously, the only thing 14 year olds contribute to society is their not-so-glorious metamorphosis into 15 year olds, who are only the smallest degree better in that they themselves become 16 year olds, who can at the very least drive themselves to work, slaving away at our nation’s many Walmarts and enjoy summer tenure as stoned lifeguards.
Besides existing and not trying harder in Spanish, there aren’t many things I regret from my teenage years. I wasn’t bad in school, was generally mild mannered, a huge dork, played soccer (badly), enormous band geek, etc, etc. If there is one other thing that I do, in fact, regret, it would be participating in the teenage terrorism that was enacted upon this poor guy.
Señor León’s treatment is a strong reminder to me of the sheer mountain of shit that teachers, particularly teachers working abroad, have to put up with. This guy may or may not have actually been a good teacher – I don’t know, I was 14, and I didn’t care. He was foreign (unlike any of our other Spanish teachers) and his English wasn’t spectacular. Clearly it was strong enough for him to have a job in the US, but people kinda hated him.
He wasn’t always the nicest guy in the world. Some of his techniques and strategies and interactions with students were a little bit harsher than was probably necessary, but that didn’t really warrant the torment my peers poured upon him. He was tricked into saying things that made students snicker and gossip. At one point, students had him convinced that a benign word – chicken – was actually used as a regional slang colloquialism of some kind for the word “fuck”. He ended up sending two students to the principal’s office for using the “C word” loudly, in class.
Chicken you, it’s not funny. Stop smiling.
He didn’t come back the next year, and we were totally cool with that. His replacement the following year was this hot 20-something that turned out to be a genuinely great teacher, despite not being a native Spanish speaker, and this ended up being the year that we all actually learned something – make of that what you will.
This would also be my last year taking formal Spanish classes. I never really enjoyed them, I never really took any of it seriously, and 15 years later I find that to have been a mistake of monolithic proportions.
Living abroad can be rough, teaching abroad is rougher
It’s common, if not expected, that foreign language teachers spend time living abroad in a nation that speaks the language they intend to teach. Paradoxically, it’s not always common for countries to simply hire native speaking teachers from those countries. In my case, Señor León was that somewhat rare native speaking unicorn, and making his life hell is something that I absolutely wish I had not been even a small part of.
It takes a lot to live abroad, let alone teach abroad, which really is an exercise in bravery. It takes serious guts to stand up in front of 20 slack-jawed, hormonal troglodytes for an hour, speaking to them with an accent, or heaven forbid blurting out a mispronounced word or slightly incorrect grammar.4 In order to project our own 14 year-old anxieties and issues onto others like some sort of acne-faced parasites, my class mocked and cajoled this guy way worse than most other teachers – and I have to surmise that it was almost entirely because he was foreign and not a native English speaker.
I genuinely don’t know if he was a good teacher or not but that’s beside the point. Good teacher or bad, he was an expat living abroad in a low paying, under appreciated job attempting to impart the knowledge of his language and culture on others, only to be rebuked. I didn’t stand up and say anything, I laughed alongside them. I didn’t enjoy Spanish class with any teacher and had no interest in being there.
I cannot overstate how wrong I was about “not needing Spanish” and this whole episode is an exercise in regret and sweet irony.
Believe it or not, they’re not robots!
It’s weird for students to think of teachers as “real people”.
It never crosses our minds that teachers aren’t these sterile robots who back into their recharging alcoves at the end of the day. Teachers get sick kids. They like to slip into slinky dresses and hit up the clubs till 4 AM. They struggle with depression or burnout or who knows what. They go home and complain to their wives about how shitty their colleagues are and why Jim the physics teacher shouldn’t be getting tenure but he’s dating the guidance councilor and she’s pulling strings at the expense of other peoples’ schedules and everything is terrible. They get high and play video games, they travel during the summer and consider shoplifting Reeses Peanut Butter Cups in their handbags. They’re trying to determine how many glasses of wine they can take in before they get too drunk to accurately grade history papers. They go to work the next day still slightly hung over. They go to night school to try to advance their careers, and they have just as much drama and excitement and absurdity in their lives as you do.
In the United States, the UK, Germany, and many other countries around the world, teacher burnout is an extraordinarily common phenomenon and it is almost definitely not primarily a result of irrepressible 14 year olds – it’s often everything going on behind the scenes. From lazy or rude coworkers to a lack of funding, to a workload that doesn’t end when the bell rings and countless bureaucracy and red tape preventing teachers from actually doing their jobs to the best of their abilities – these are the problems that exist in the hidden realm; the things nobody sees except the immediate friends and family of these teachers – who are more often than not, also teachers.
It’s not just the students…
No teacher would deny that they’ve had to teach the odd infuriating little turd, but most teachers that I know say that the actual teaching part of their job is the good part – the rewarding part – and that the awful parts are more likely to involve other teachers, school board bureaucracy, overwork, and a socio-political failure at the national level to provide support and empathy from the community and legislators.
Now, take that already frustrated teacher and drop them into a foreign country and watch their stress magnify exponentially.
Anyone who has ever moved abroad to stay for an extended period of time (i.e. not that scripted and sterile semester study-abroad program you took in college, Tina) has had to deal with the stress that comes along with assimilation, and in many countries – bureaucracy.
Germany – as the example I am most familiar with – slaps you with unnecessary and incomprehensible laws, is mismanaged by incompetents, intentionally misleads, and loads you up with insane amounts of paperwork. It does everything in its power to make you want to throw your hands up in the air and go home, and while I haven’t immigrated to any other countries, I assume many of them are very similar. Teaching takes all of that bureaucracy and layers it with an additional coat of bullshit-colored paint.
One of the most common work-related reasons for which someone moves abroad is language teaching – for very obvious reasons. Italy doesn’t need math teachers because math is math is math no matter how you look at it and any Italian math teacher will do, but they do need French teachers and importing them from France is the logical solution.
However, despite it being ideal – importing foreign language teachers is difficult for many districts – especially those in rural areas. Visa sponsorship, the often temporary nature of the visiting teacher, or the sheer difficulty of finding, interviewing, and hiring the right person in another country can make this not entirely economical. In my experience, at least, this means that a small majority foreign language teachers are not native speakers, which works, but nobody would claim it’s preferential.
Language teachers moving abroad are thrust into a new government’s education system that is often very different from their own, even when traveling within something like the EU where international movement is relatively simple and many standards are at least somewhat similar.
For example – European (German) schools don’t have the extracurricular, school sports teams, or “club” culture that we have in the US. Students who want to do other things find them elsewhere – sometimes the school district helps with this process, but it is in no way the same. This system works, but it seemed weird to me at first. There are different legal requirements, different ways of interacting between teachers and students, and certain layers of communication etiquette that alternate between super casual and super formal without any real rhyme or reason. Navigating these cultural quirks is hard for any expat – but working in a state institution such as a school just makes it all the crazier.5
Just like in school itself, new colleagues will still have their little cliques and break room drama. If you’re foreign, get ready for people to throw around their casual cliches: “Oh, don’t worry, the day’s almost over, just in time for your siesta!” or “The cafeteria has pasta today, Italians love pasta, right?” or “Oh, you brought rice for lunch! Is it a family recipe from Taiwan?”
Shut up Sandra, it’s just fucking rice.
High school never entirely changes whether it’s as a student or a teacher and any teacher who has ever moved to a new school at home or abroad knows this.
As a foreigner, you wouldn’t be just new to the school, you’d be new new; new to everything, and teachers can be as petty as anyone in any workplace, even when – or perhaps especially when – they don’t realize they’re doing it.
Even the language barrier in the work place can rear its ugly head sometimes.
A French teacher moving to Italy to teach French would clearly have to have a very high degree of fluency in Italian to get the job in the first place. Chances are that he can handle most things that are thrown at him, has nearly perfect pronunciation 90% of the time, knows how to properly use prego and may even have a better theoretical grasp of Italian than the Italians.6 The problem is that he’s still not a native speaker, he still comes home exhausted from code switching at the end of the day, and if he makes a mistake in front of colleagues, he’s going to feel stupid for the rest of the day – which will almost surely happen from time to time.
These things add up and they contribute a lot of stress to an already stressful life situation.
Conclusion
All teachers are deserving of the respect of their students, their colleagues, and the public, but my goal was to focus on language teachers teaching abroad because I think they are under more stress than they’ll ever let on or that you’ll ever see. Complaining isn’t cool and it’s not always easy to convey these grievances to people who haven’t lived them.
Today on World Teachers’ Day, I’d just like to call a little bit of attention to the things foreign language teachers deal with every day and encourage you to take a minute or ten to commend the many who may have uprooted their entire lives to come educate your children.
If you’re part of a faculty or staff working with a foreign teacher, try to see life from their point of view. In some countries, such as Germany, it’s very common for teachers to spend a year or more studying or teaching abroad in another country such as the United States or the UK. If you’ve done something like this you know how frustrating things can be. The best thing you can do is to just be kind. Be patient, and above all be conscientious without being patronizing. I mean, why would you even mention the fucking rice, Sandra?
This doesn’t just extend to new teachers, either. Even foreign teachers who have been teaching in your school for 5, 10, 20 years will still face days where they want dip the organic avocado toast you left in the teachers’ lounge fridge in cyanide, pack their bags and flee the country on the next red-eye.
If you are a language teacher living and teaching in a country that is not your own, speaking a language that is not your native, know that the things you do matter. Try not to become bitter or angry, and remember that while it may not always seem like anyone gives a shit about you, your subject, or your profession, there are those who do – and your work, no matter how small it seems sometimes, makes a difference on a global level.
If you’re the student of a language teacher from another country, take a moment to appreciate the stress and BS they have to deal with behind the curtains, the things you don’t see. Realize that they’ve come a long way, may not have family support, that they aren’t native speakers of your own language, and that they don’t always know exactly how you do things – or why. The best thing you can do is to actually try to learn something. There’s nothing worse for anyone speaking to a group of people than looking out over the sea of vapid faces of people who very visibly don’t give a rat’s ass. Your teacher is there to make you be less dumb, don’t waste their time or yours. You’re stuck there either way – make the most of it.
Besides, even if you really don’t care about your teacher, that foreign language class you don’t think you’re going to use may turn out to be the single most important subject you didn’t pay attention to.
I should know…
16 years after that Spanish class I daydreamed through, the realization that I made a mistake in squandering my time hits home; today is a very big day for me.
Today is my anniversary! Last year (2018), I married a Spanish language teacher and expat and you’d better believe that I wish I’d payed a bit more attention in high school.
Believe me when I say that I’m not just trying to spout inspirational drivel because it seemed language related. Despite not being a real teacher myself, I’d like to think that I have a unique perspective into the unseen world of the educator that many do not, and I thought that there was no better day than World Teachers’ Day, nor better way to try to make even one teacher living abroad feel just a little bit less existentially despondent.
So yeah, that’s pretty much it. Be less of a dick to your colleague or your teacher – especially when they “ain’t from ’round here.” Try to understand that what comes as easily as breathing to you absolutely does not come as easily to the Ausländer, even if they try hard to make it look that way.
Support the teachers in your area and in your country by voting in local elections, including school board elections. Vote for candidates who support school funding, foreign language programs, exchange programs and just about everything else that helps students and their education providers.
I’m sure there will be a hundred posts about World Teachers’ Day hitting the Internet today, but I wanted to to try to specifically reassure at least one or two foreign language teachers that the difficulties they face are not lost on everyone. If this article contributes to reducing anyone’s stress or teacher burnout, I consider it a worthwhile 3,600 words.
Oh and, wherever you are Señor León: I know it’s a bit late, but sorry about that…
Happy World Teachers’ Day!
Apex-editor of Languages Around the Globe, collector of linguists, regaler of history, accidental emmigrant, serial dork and English language mercenary and solutions fabricator. Potentially a necromancer. All typos are my own.
