Defeat

December 5, 2011

Another week has passed in China, without much to report. I am frustrated and lonely. I am tired of feeling incompetent, and I don’t know how to fix it. The guidance I am getting is frustrating me, even though it is good guidance. However, it is things I feel like I have been working on forever, or have changed because it didn’t work for me. Nothing seems to work. I am tired of it, and want to throw in the towel. Angel (who works in Foreign Affairs) came to one of my classes last week and in my mind, ruined what I had going. My kids behaved themselves. They appeared smart for the first time this year. And, the lesson was both fun and engaging. They liked it. But, I needed to have the class when Angel was there as a normal class, so that I could make phone calls home to prove I am serious. Turns out, I didn’t get a fourth lesson with them anyways, so it was mute, but still. Today both Paul and Angel came to my class. Paul gave me some basic thoughts and then told me he would teach my next class. If he watched me teach the next class, he would see that the kids are completely different and completely behaved. He taught my best class – the kids who make me want to believe in my other classes as well. And then he was like “do you see what I did there”. Sure I do, but those kids would jump off a bridge if you demonstrated it properly. Right now, I have been battered so much in the last three months that quitting would be a relief. I often consider telling Paul that I won’t be here for the second semester. I don’t necessarily have to go home, but I won’t be teaching. I could go to Ghana where I can see the benefit I have, and there is nothing to make me incompetent. I could take what’s left of my savings and travel. Anything but failing every day. Please. This constant failing and feeling of incompetence has to stop.

We are making a DVD of the actions for the song for the children to use to practice on for the song competition. Erin and I will both do six of the 12 songs we have done for the recording of the DVD. This is another source of my incompetence/frustration. For three months, I was never told there were specific actions that take place in the interlude of the songs, and now there is, and they will be specific. Okay, we can handle that. For three months, I said that I had different actions in some of the songs because I blanked out and made them up; I was told this was okay. Now, this is a problem – all the classes have to do the same. So rather than change the actions at any point in the last three months, my kids get to relearn it now. Awesome. It’s not like my kids aren’t struggling already because they have a crap teacher.

I have gone back to not sleeping. It hits 11 at night, and I don’t even feel like going to bed. But come 6:30, I sure don’t feel like getting up! We are starting our mornings 20 minutes later (but breakfast is at the same time, so I still have to get up), and our afternoons end at the same time, so now lunch is only two hours (not 2.5). This is a decrease in my nap time, so that can’t even be the real reason why I am not sleeping. Right now, I am sitting here thinking about a nap, but come five hours from now when I should be going to bed, I will be wide awake. I don’t like night time. I feel the most lonely and vulnerable then. I am running out of steam. Not sleeping and failing every day is beating me up hard. We have a month until the vacation, but I am not sure it will be enough. I really don’t think I can take another six months of defeat!