How Hard Could It Be?

I asked myself this very question on the bus to Ranong one month ago.

How hard could it be to teach a language I’ve spoken for twenty years?

It didn’t take a month to find the answer: hard.

English was my bread and butter in school. I can’t say the same for maths or science.

There was just one thing that topped my analytical knack – my innate ability to daydream.

Do you blame me? We were all guilty of traversing the transcendent world that exists beyond classroom windows. What else stimulates the adolescent imagination to such an extent?

Don’t answer that.

The problem is, in ten minutes I’ll be teaching modal and auxiliary verbs to my Year Four class, and I can’t say I’m very prepared.

Mr. Gordon must’ve covered this topic while I was lining up a conversion to win the World Cup for the All Blacks on the Nudgee Junior playing fields outside my Year Four classroom window. Dan Carter in the commentary box.

The fly-half fixes his eyes on the uprights. He’s 22 out from the sideline. The world is watching. Will he win the World Cup for the Kiwis? Will he secure his seat in rugby immortality? …Yes, he will!

Two minutes left now. How’d that happen? Not the window again.

I pocket my stationery – a black and a blue whiteboard marker and a red pen – and shut the Year Four English textbook. It’s go-time.

The students greet me with their usual welcome hymn.

‘Good afternoon. Take a seat,’ I say back to them. I think it’s best I steer clear of any hymns.   

‘We’re on page 84 today.’

Pages flicker open. Then come the puzzled looks as the students ponder the word ‘auxiliary’.

It’s alien to most native English speakers. Now imagine that English is your third language.

‘Repeat after me. Awg-zilary,’ I say to 26 baffled faces.

‘Aaawwwg-zilaryyy,’ the students utter out of sync. Close enough.

‘What does au-, that word, mean?’ a girl in the front row asks.

I think back to the AI Overview from my Google Search before class.  

‘It adds functionality to another verb,’ I explain with an overly false confidence.

‘What does functionality mean?’ the boy beside her asks.

‘Umm. It’s how well something works,’ I stutter with the least convoluted answer I can improvise.

They’re lost. I turn to the textbook. Maybe this will help.

‘With auxiliary and modal verbs, you form the question tag and short answer with the same verb,’ I read aloud with a baffled face. That makes 27.

Hands shoot up. Questions flood in. The lights are on but nobody’s home. I’m frozen – caught in an ambush of how’s and why’s.  

What could I possibly say to escape the firing line?

‘Who wants to play Hangman?’