The Wonderous World of an ESL Teacher

Life as an ESL teacher is weird. Fun, but weird. This past Monday I came back to work after having been gone for two days (Thurs. & Fri.) to a conference/training inservice. When I walked into my classroom at 9:00 feeling rather ehrg about coming in to work that morning, all my students burst into spontaneous applause and cheering. Now, that just blew me away. When working with people from other countries who don't get much chance to connect with Americans, you often form close bonds, and especially at beginning levels, students get very attached to their teachers. But I've never been cheered just for showing up at work before. It actually brought tears to my eyes .

And now this evening (I teach in the evening as well as the morning, and have the afternoons off) I took a couple hours off to attend a staff event at the school where I work in the morning. I had arranged a substitute to run my open computer lab hour for me, and informed my manager that I would be arriving about 15 minutes before regular classes started in the evening. So I arrive at work at 6:15 and walk into the staff room to put something in the fridge, and suddenly everyone's talking, asking me what happened, where I was, was I in a car accident, am I OK? And I'm thinking to myself, "What, can't a girl take an hour off without everyone panicking?" But it turns out that my substitute had apparently gotten the time confused and arrived half an hour late, that my manager had completely forgotten that I was planning to take the time off, and that no one had actually bothered to ask my substitute where I was... and so they were worried sick about me. When I showed up they were very relieved to know that I was not sick or hurt or mysteriously missing, but very confused about why no one was there to open the computer lab at 5:30. It's nice to have such a reputation for reliability that if I arrive an hour late for work, everyone will automatically assume the worst--rather than assume that I am just late for work--but it was a bit surreal.

I don't think I know anyone who doesn't work in this field that has such bizarre but heartwarming experiences at work. If I could explain it better, I would. But it's a strange world, and lovely.