Welcome to teaching in South Korea. You have four classes in a row. There’s no time for you to hide in that little bathroom stall with the motivational poster. The show must go on, malfunctioning computer or not. Get ready to tap dance on the stage that is your classroom. Spit out a character – voice and all.
All the players have arrived. The classroom captain plays the techie. She’s checked the sound this time. It won’t refuse to turn on in the third line of dialogue again. Always thankful for the help, you don’t forget to send a nod of gratitude her way before you take the center.
And then there’s the stage manager, your magnificent co-teacher. She swings in the room to settle everyone down–a show of her amazing skills. She tells everyone to take a seat. As everyone finds one, she clasps her hands together. You may go on.
Rehearsal took a good amount of your sleeping time. So, you’re working with shot nerves and eyelids threatening to droop. Three cups of coffee down today, surely a dozen more to go. But you jump around while talking, excited like Bill Gates just gave you his fortune. The kids didn’t expect that. They snap to attention. They hang on your words like to-be-continued. You continue for a bit, throw a joke in here and there, and get them practically fighting to say the lines with you. It ain’t Broadway, but there’s a Tony award with your name somewhere.
You breathe in the claps and shouts of encouragement to go on, sucking it in like air after drowning. Even if they don’t realize this, you know that the performance gets better with a good audience. That’s why you shut down a heckler with a quickness. All it takes is one thing to derail everything.
The first act finishes in good time, and now the performance moves to act two. Full audience participation. They’ve been chomping at the bit for this. The first group had told them what was going down a week ago. You plan to have a little game going, a crowd pleaser. Start a scene, throw the ball, someone catches it and continues the story. You will signal when the piece reaches the end to avoid spinning into an eternity of random. They get the instructions. The game can go on. You move your hand to get the ball. It’s unevenly rounded body usually pokes up from your class materials box. You grasp at air. It’s not there.
You definitely need the ball. Without it, it’s a game of “gotcha!” Students will think you’re gunning for them if you call them out directly. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. You can’t use the eraser as a replacement. That looks like you forgot. You can’t make a new one. No tape and it looks like you forgot. Can’t drop the smile. As soon as you drop the smile, they know something is wrong. That’s blood to a shark. Big smile while you’re praying to God for an angel to bring you a sphere made of tape and wrapped paper.
The angel just happens to be your tall co-teacher in an overcoat. She reads the panic setting in and takes the arduous journey to the teacher’s office across the school. You stall with review, fun facts, and Q&A with bribes in the form of new, shiny, pointed-tip pencils – really anything that will stop this whole thing from imploding. After a while, you can stall no more. Right before you admit that this whole thing has been a sham, your co-teacher returns. The ball has come to thee. Praise to the Almighty.
You look around. No one caught on. You thought that everyone could see the mistake. No one did. The game goes smoother than chocolate silk.
At the end, they all clap. They even bow to you. They’re sad that it’s ending. You assure them that they’ll get another round next week.
Back stage, in your office, you and your co-teacher joke about how everything went. You wonder if you should have two balls in play to up the ante during the second act. Your co-teacher tosses tape to wrap around your next paper masterpiece. You catch it with ease and she’s already turning away, getting ready to take her own center. As for you, you begin to take note of things to remember for the next time you have to run this show, which is ten minutes from now. No rest before the next curtain call. You down another coffee, this time with a drop of mint.
Breanna Durham is a 2015-2016 ETA at Yongwon Middle School in Yongwon, Gyeongsangnam-do.