How to Squander a College Education

Lately, I've been feeling pretty down about work.

Don't get me wrong, I still really like teaching and somehow the cuteness of Asian babies hasn't worn off yet.

But this past week has been tedious to the point of delirium.

Since last week was kindergarten graduation, the kids have had this week off. Of course, our beloved King and Queen Teachers couldn't bear to bring a single shred of happiness into the teachers' lives by giving us the mornings off, but have instead invented a series of repulsively boring and repetitive tasks for us to do.

For 4 hours.

Every.

Day.

The trained monkey task I've been given is recording myself reading children's books out loud.

I know what you're thinking: that doesn't sound so bad!


And it doesn't.

But oh dear GOD, it is.

It's worse.

Our school has a Book Club for the kindergartners. They check out a book, read it at home, and do a super short report ("This book was silly," "I did not like this book," or, as one of my more challenged students wrote, "This book is bed" (sic)).

It actually does really help their reading; I can definitely tell among my students who is and is not in Book Club. But a lot of their parents don't speak good enough English to help them read or sound out more challenging words, so each book has a CD of an American teacher reading it.

It makes sense why they do it this way, but making those CDs is like Chinese water torture-- doesn't sound especially harsh, but after an hour you'll be crying for your mommy.

Sometimes I get lucky and it's a nonfiction book about the migratory patterns of Blue Whales ("A Year in the Life of a Blue Whale") or about the history of silk and I get to learn something new (coughNERDcough), but usually it's some totally bogus story about a dog named Biscuit or a cat named Fabian.

....FABIAN.

Literally, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

Also, when is a Korean 5-year-old EVER going to need to know how to read "Fabian"?!?

And of course I can't just read the darn book and move on the the next.

Ooooh no.

King Teacher has decided it would be most beneficial for the kids if they "echo read" the books.

For me, this means I read a line:

     "Tinky Winky found Dipsy's hat."

Then wait, presumably for the kids to parrot the line back.

Then I read the next line:

     "Teletubbies loooove Tubby toast!"

And wait some more.

Whenever there's a page turn, I have to say "turn the page!"

There's also a long introduction shpeil at the beginning, which I will now type from memory:

          "Let's echo read! I will read, and you repeat. When you hear me say 'turn the page!' please go to the next page. At the end, there will be three questions about the story. Please choose the correct answer."

Heaven forbid you record any of this in a normal speaking voice. The goal is to sound as much like a Disney character/cheerleader on some serious uppers as possible.

My alter ego.

And no, copies of these CDs will not be available to the general public. 

Each of these recordings takes at least 10 minutes, but some of the longer books (usually alphabet or counting books-- "A is for apple! Red, juicy apple!" or "There are 9 sheep on the farm. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9!") can take over 20 minutes.

Gruesome but accurate.

I counted today-- 57 books. In 4 days. 

The worst parts are the animal sounds. Farm books are an especially high risk genre.

"Meow." Bangs head on desk.

"Woof, woof." Woof my life.

"Oink, oink." ......... There are no words.

Hillary, one of the other teachers here, actually had to howl. I shudder at the thought.

Just so everyone (I am very much included in this category) remembers:

I HAVE A COLLEGE DEGREE. I AM A SMART PERSON. I MOST CERTAINLY CAN READ "MONSTER MATH: WHAT TIME IS IT?"

On days like today, it can be a little hard to remember. 

Oh, and did I mention that if you sneeze during a recording you have to start over? 

Yeah, that's a thing.

It happened THREE TIMES. 

I'm not saying I did throw the book across the room, but I'm certainly also not saying that I didn't.