Jesting and Tutoring

Author - Aqua Smith

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“This is a bad idea!” 

    “Excuse me; what are you talking about?!”

    Here I was, standing in an enclosed classroom surrounded by carpeted, silver-blue dividers and egg-white plastered walls surrounded by some varying crayon art little kids would doodle. Most of the attached work was related to Pokémon, also known as Pocket Monsters, a popular video game franchise. There must have been some crazy, major Pokémon fans within the tutoring staff- myself included. This theme was quite fitting as it appeared I was one of the Pokémon trainers supposedly tasked to educate and raise these “monstrous” children. Instead, I watched the boisterous chaos unfold among silly, nonsensical Mandarin banter between two girls; the first was wearing glasses and the other with a ponytail. As a matter of fact, this whole scheme was revealed and expanded into a blossoming field of varying conversations. Except, the growth wasn’t orderly as the lengthening of sprouting corn and thriving leaves. Rather, there was an immense exponential infusion of panic and despair within the students- they were to submit their assignments within thirty minutes. ​

 If one thought that this would be a smooth job, think again.
A month ago, I volunteered at a study center to tutor young Chinese immigrant kids in American-focused school subjects. So, I was tasked by the director, David, to be a teacher’s assistant in a variety of classes. That Monday, Chan (the other teacher’s assistant) and I were assigned to Harry, who taught US History for the first session.

After their lecture, the students were assigned to train their critical thinking skills to solve a puzzle related to a particular event within the US during WWII- rationing. During this historical period, Americans were forced to limit themselves to certain food supplies to support the war effort. Their daily meals and food supplies were limited by the money they could spend and the amount of limited rationing points they were allowed to utilize within a month. In this case, the seven students were tasked to compile a weekly meal plan consisting of three sustenance-fulfilling meals per day within 72 points per individual. They were given a document listing the options of certain food items they could use and how many ration points each cost. For example, a sack of medium-sized potatoes would be worth one ration point while a jar of sugar would cost ten. Within thirty minutes, they must submit their document to Google Classroom for Chan and Harry to assign; the document must have a table containing their weekly schedule and a paragraph explaining their reasoning. It was a running joke that Harry would assign Chan as “the government” overseeing these poor citizens. In hindsight, I don’t think Chan was doing a good job as the government as I saw the unfolding barbaric chaos brought by the lawless behavior of frantic Chinese immigrant children. ​

After their lecture, the students were assigned to train their critical thinking skills to solve a puzzle related to a particular event within the US during WWII- rationing. During this historical period, Americans were forced to limit themselves to certain food supplies to support the war effort. Their daily meals and food supplies were limited by the money they could spend and the amount of limited rationing points they were allowed to utilize within a month. In this case, the seven students were tasked to compile a weekly meal plan consisting of three sustenance-fulfilling meals per day within 72 points per individual. They were given a document listing the options of certain food items they could use and how many ration points each cost. For example, a sack of medium-sized potatoes would be worth one ration point while a jar of sugar would cost ten. Within thirty minutes, they must submit their document to Google Classroom for Chan and Harry to assign; the document must have a table containing their weekly schedule and a paragraph explaining their reasoning. It was a running joke that Harry would assign Chan as “the government” overseeing these poor citizens. In hindsight, I don’t think Chan was doing a good job as the government as I saw the unfolding barbaric chaos brought by the lawless behavior of frantic Chinese immigrant children. ​

Unfortunately, it appeared these young stooges were dropped in a luxurious bath of borrowed time; most did not know how to swim and how to not drown to their doom at all. While this scatterbrained chaos unfolded upon a single-paged project, I was just standing casually in the back. There was no harm, no foul. However, it did feel bad that no one asked me for any hints. I was just oddly standing in the back, resting, metaphorically grabbing some popcorn, and entertaining myself in the muse of the impending conflict.

 Within the jaw-dropping five minutes, there was just the usual eerie silence that the students soaked themselves in. It took this long for them to fully realize that reality isn’t so sweet- they have this “giant” assignment due within a literal time limit. They thought they would go easy after slumbering and vicariously typing through my slideshow presentation, but no! Alas, they had to frantically drag their mice to Google Drive and string together something. And this was supposed to be a history class, not math! Math was next door, past the jungled maze of those fishy, pesky immobile dividers. This was not today’s repertoire for them. Thankfully, their Chromebooks were equipped with calculators, so they should have been in good hands. ​

Except… this was not the case. ​

Right as I reminded them of the assignment being due in twenty minutes, there was a flurry of agonizing shouting in Mandarin that was especially pronounced on the right side of the classroom. While I didn’t know many of the students' English names (except for Henry), there was a rave of excited anxiety shrilled between this female glassed nerd, a boba-drinking ponytailed girl, her long-haired friend with her eyes glued to her iPhone, Henry, and his mostly silent friend (I’m not surprised if this guy came out of a Japanese role-playing video game). At this point, the lawless, disorganized exchanges really settled in after Harry tediously confirmed one thing: there was a possibility that the entire classroom could fulfill the project together, so long as they each submitted their own document; they had the ability to work together to procure a weekly schedule. Upon hearing this miracle, these students were slamming their fingers to the drum-roll of Chromebook keyboards on the shared Google document. ​

“That’s it- I’m done with this group. Y’all stupid,” the glasses girl claimed as she looked forward to wielding her trusty No.2 leaded pencil; she became impatient with dealing with the “dumb” classroom antics. ​

“Wait, no; you can’t just leave the group! It’s a ‘group’ assignment- it’s easier to do it together as a class. We’ll have more points that way,” panically expressed the ponytailed girl; at this point, it was safe to say that she assigned herself as the commander of a depraved army. ​

“Exactly~” proclaimed the seemingly calm phony long-haired girl; she definitely had her friend’s interest in mind. ​

“Nope, I’m doing this by myself. I do not want to fail this assignment; I don’t need you guys anymore. Good luck with it; you’re gonna need it.”

Well, dang, these two girls got offended by glasses- guffawing at the audacity that their intellectual turned her back on the entire class. In the end, they became more determined to scream baby tantrums that did nothing to allow any possible flourishing of the schedule. Meanwhile, there were quiet skirmishes between Henry and his buddy. They were akin to squirrels gnawing on their acorns, barely making any significant progress on the assignment. It was intriguing to see their mouse cursors just scrolling up and down, sizing up the immense absurdity of the Google document and the rationing list. ​

“Cereal, two apples, and a sausage for three meals throughout the day? How is that going to fill you guys up? Aye-yah…” David said in disdain in the chaos occurring throughout his ten minutes, already prideful of the fact he successfully attempted the assignment fifteen minutes earlier. ​

“Don’t worry- we have enough points to buy a dozen eggs; this should perfectly last us for a day,” the ponytailed boba girl said in a desperate panic.

“Excuse me? You will not survive on eggs alone; you need variety. Is this how you eat every day? I thought you guys liked to eat fried rice and pork buns, let alone your boba tea.”

“No worries, sir, the cereal should last us for that entire day,” Henry replied to David’s earlier inquiry; I chuckled upon the humor of realizing that they haven’t realized the problem yet. ​

“This isn’t healthy. I don’t think your meal plan will work out,” Harry responded as he walked curiously in the precarious conversation for what counted as a meal and the contemplation of a last-minute incorporation of daily meals meeting a minimum 2,000 calorie count.

And no, I did not forget about the other left hand side of the class. There were two other students: a skater boy and a buff dude. The muscled student was diligent in doing what he could within the limited time constraint; his hands were consistently drilling in the keyboard’s buttons, digging himself into a grave. On the other hand, the other teacher’s assistant was unfortunate enough to be sitting next to the skater boy. While the skater boy was also shy, he was not ashamed to beg and attempt in bribing Chan (the government) to give him more ration points- as if he could even offer more points in the first place! ​

I looked at the clock, 3:20 PM.

These immigrant students had ten more minutes to spare. It was quite operatic to see a performance of hopeless yells and dire hollering trying to parade in their dubious schedule in time. Heh, funnily enough, I don’t think I was ever involved in this sort of light-hearted environment when I was in high school. ​

At that time, my teenage self-esteem was at an all-time low. I was trapped by rich, emerald green-metallic construction fences as if forcing my attention to the entrapped road I had to follow. As much as any teen would want their rebellious freedom, there was none allowed at my school. It was ironic they said to look forward to the distant future, as we were simultaneously trapped in the tense of a present future. While there were many days of clear, warm skies and air free from pollution, we were stuck in an apocalypse as crying slaves, suffocating and facing sweaty, contaminated interactions stemmed from torturous feelings of incompetence that all stemmed from competitive pressure seen instilled within stereotypic Asian families. I was not the only one feeling our souls dying from the agonizing, suicidal sense of perfectionism to get those straight A’s from all six or seven simultaneous AP and honor courses. My classrooms were stuffed with a suffocating atmosphere of exhaustive competition and silent, burnt-out trepidation amongst the students in silent desperation for that rare “4.0 GPA” for their dream college admissions. No one had the time, energy, and permission for these bouts of unpressured, nonsensical banter. We were stringed puppets, mute with our eyes mostly glued to quizzes, tests, classwork, homework, whiteboards, projected screens, and selfishly ambitious social networking at best. I don’t think I was ever truly entertained during class by my peers, depart from the various school subjects and lessons my teachers procured. ​

To be honest, everything felt dishonestly fake back then. ​

Life in that public school was always stressful and also depressing at times. As I reflected upon my unhappy memories of the bittersweet past, I am glad that I had the opportunity to revel in witnessing the happy relationships that these high school immigrants have maintained with one another regardless of whatever their grades are. Even though I wished I had similar experiences in the past when I was in high school, I continue to greatly admire and hope that these students continued their gleeful interactions with one another.  ​

Soon, my phone’s clock struck 3:29 PM- the final minute was trickling down to the tick of the very last second. While glasses-girl and their other math peers were free to run in the back, the rest of the class anxiously clamored to turn something into Google Classroom. There was breathless, frenzied shouting of the miscalculated rationing points, Harry doing a last-minute showcasing of a website they could have used to make meals for them, and a bewildering paragraph mentioning raw snake meat that had never appeared as an option in the given rationing list. ​

I don’t think I was ever this entertained during class. 
One thing’s for sure: these stooges have a long way ahead of them and I am delighted to see how far they will grow.

​

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