Another thing that happened at that depressing teacher's day dinner last Thursday was when Grace said "E is for effort." This was in response to someone (was is Curt?) asking her what she thought of my teaching. It was said very positively, and she said some other positive things about me and other teachers, too, but upon reflection, I feel as if it's a classic example of being "damned through faint praise."
It's weird for me, actually. In most everything I've ever attempted in life, if I get a less-than-stellar review, the qualification has generally been something on the order of "very talented, but not the best effort." Consider, above all else, my fiasco in the PhD program at Penn. But more recently – the unpleasantness in Long Beach as a database programmer and administrator, and now this teaching experiment – the reviews have been inverted: "great effort, but, well, with respect to talent… no comment." What does this mean?
On the one hand, it's because I keep pushing myself to try new challenges. And, specifically, to try things where I know that I cannot fall back on my innate "Mr Professor" academic talents, such as administrative jobs and this very socially oriented teaching job. But on the other hand, is it some change that comes with getting older? Am I getting stupider? The talent isn't there anymore? So it's effort, or nothing.
Regardless, one thing neither Grace (whom I most respect) nor any of my other colleagues take the time to say is: great teacher. And, of course, there are where my insecurities lie, too. I was watching a cheesy Korean comedy in which a mom tells her daughter that teaching is easy – anyone who is a role model to others is a teacher. I'm trying to figure out what this means – I have an intuition that it will help me to understand Pete's perspective regarding misplaced idealism, maybe.
I guess getting an E for Effort is better than being told I suck, across the board. And I know that at least most of my colleagues like and respect me, at least at some level – there's the business of being nicknamed "professor" – just like at every other single job I've ever held. But Grace's comment… Pete's denunciations of my misplaced, inappropriate idealism (and I'm really not sure what this means, except that he's clearly perceived my excessive perfectionist tendencies and he feels – probably accurately – that these tendencies have no place in the world of hagwon teaching)… these things have me singularly gloomy, this weekend.
It was deeply, darkly overcast and raining all day today. A rich, textured, rainy sky, like the most gorgeous, reliably rainy August afternoons in Mexico City, although cooler than that. I lazed around the apartment and tried to study my Korean. I walked to the Homever store and, behold, there was Land-O-Lakes brand Pepper Jack Cheese for sale, imported from Minnesota. I bought some, for the nostalgia of it.
The nostalgic mood continued when I got back, and I listened to Cat Stevens for several hours. That's a trip back in time, for sure. I read a volume of the Deathnote manga (or manhwa as it's called here – long-format graphic novels) – these stories and related movies are so popular with teenagers here, I started reading them as an effort to have another useful basis to show some knowledge of their world and interests, but have found them appealing and interesting reads in their own right.