Last classes

I guess I am officially no longer a teacher. I taught my last two classes this morning. I asked the first years to fill out evaluations, and though they might have struggled to put their feedback into English words, they did well enough for it to be worthwhile. After last week I realized that they probably wanted to take pictures together (and I wished I had done that on the last day with my other classes) so we spent a lot of time doing assorted group shots and pair shots.

I had to finish class early because I had to go to a 'department meeting.' Trang had intended for this meeting to be a surprise, but at least four other faculty members blew her cover and called or texted me with questions about my farewell party today. At the farewell party, I couldn't help but remember a fellow ETA's blog post about her experience going to a one-year-old's birthday party, where the child slept somewhere out of the way and all of the adults drank and celebrated. I was told to sit at the far corner of the table and, after giving me a few parting gifts at the beginning of the meal, everyone else had a riotously good time having apparently hilarious conversations in Vietnamese. On the way home, Trang mentioned that it was odd that no one really talked about my departure or talked much to me. I was glad that at least one person noticed that I had been left out. I didn't really take it personally, but that doesn't mean it was an enjoyable experience.

The college has been preparing some sort of publication compiling students' and faculty members' reflections on their experiences with me as an ETA this year. Unfortunately, all of these things are in Vietnamese. Fortunately, at they all have English abstracts, and today Trang gave me a copy of the abstracts to look over, correct, and enjoy. I thought I would share some highlights with you. These are before my corrections, because I think it's better in my students' own words:

• She is a young girl but her patience is wonderful. Thank you, Adelina, for providing us with great opportunities to practice English and appreciate your cultures!
• Especially, whenever I make mistakes, she has some ways to correct them without making me embarrassed. Last but not least, she usually makes the class exciting. Thus, we can understand the lessons easily and remember them longer.
• Studying with Adelina, the name of our ETA, was a really my happy time. She taught us with her heart. Sometimes, when I could not understand what she was saying, she enthusiastically expressed her ideas again and again.. That was really helpful. The atmosphere of the class was very relaxing.

A healthy dash of the other side of the coin:

• However, I also met some difficulties. For example, sometimes, I can’t understand what she wanted to convey. Because she is unable to explain her presentation in Vietnamese, I can’t understand the lesson thoroughly. The more she tried to explain, the more confused I became, sometimes.

And a whole abstract, because it is so poignant:

During the last nine months, I have had a meaningful opportunity to study with an English teaching assistant-Ms Solis Montufar Adelina Mariflor. Of our memories, I remember most a period of American civilization subject.
That time, my class studied about the Rocky Mountain Region of The US. She was really enthusiastic to teach us. She drew the map of the region onto the board carefully. She taught us about each state of the region with its own strait. She taught us how to pronounce the name of each state. She not only supplied us with the general knowledge, but also told some tourism destinations by showing us many pictures about them. Personally, I was most impressive about Devil’s Tower National Monument. It looks like a gigantic tree stump which turned to stone. Actually, it is phonolite volcanic rock that rings when struck. This information is also in the text book but it became more attractive with Adelina. So, I wished I had an opportunity to travel there. It would be one of my destinations of the US tour.
After that, she gave us a quiz to check the knowledge. In the quiz, we had to write the name of each state. That made us worried because we could not remember their spellings. So, we cheated. We wispily discussed with our friends. Of course, we could not get the permission to do like that. Adelina went around us and maybe she knew that we were cheating. She just whispered: “no talking, no talking” with a really lovely voice. The quiz was really difficult but we decided to stop cheating. We did not want to make her upset. Her voice was impressive. I remembered that voice so much.  
After the quiz, I realized that her behavior had affected me very much. Instead of being angry with our cheating, she was so gentle. Thanks for her behavior, I have tried to get a better behavior.

 Now that's what I call positive feedback.