Hello again from Hanoi. Life is still good here and it has been filled with meeting new people, trying new foods, exploring northern Vietnam, and trying to learn as much about teaching and Vietnamese culture as I possibly can. My time in Hanoi has gone by quickly. It's hard to imagine that I've already been here for three weeks and that in just a week and a half I'll be moving up to Cao Bang to begin teaching. Quite a lot has happened since I last posted, so I'll try to organize this post by topic.
Orientation
Our weeks have been filled with a combination of teacher training in the mornings and Vietnamese lessons each afternoon. Learning how to teach (or should I say, trying to learn how to teach) has been a very difficult process. There's so much thought and so many different considerations that go into planning each component of every lesson. I am quickly learning that as a student I completely took for granted the ways in which activities in the classroom related to each other, served specific purposes, and accomplished very defined goals and objectives. I don't mean to say that I didn't appreciate the preparation of my teachers, but learning about lesson planning has given me a much greater sense of the reasoning behind many common classroom practices and methodologies.
Learning how to teach has been made especially difficult given the fact that we have not been given much information on our schools or the levels of our future students. While this largely seems to be a cultural issue, I think that our time would have been even better spent if we had more of an understanding of the environments in which we will be teaching (more on the cultural aspect of this later).
One major challenge presented itself last Thursday when we were given the chance to teach a model class with actual Vietnamese high school students. I prepared my lesson plan, giving it quite a bit of thought and several modifications, but within five minutes of actually teaching, I realized that the activities that I had planned were far too advanced for the group of students whom I was teaching. I decided to scrap my lesson plan and basically "wing-it" from there. While I was happy that I was able to adapt on-the-fly, the experience taught me a valuable lesson about preparing for classes and the importance of always having a back-up plan.
It has become abundantly clear that there is a serious lack of emphasis placed on critical thinking skills in the Vietnamese education system. Students are taught in a very traditional manner, often having to memorize what they learn and simply regurgitate it on exams. Not surprisingly, teachers almost always teach in a lecture style and straight from their textbooks. While there used to be and, no doubt, still are many schools in the United States that follow this traditional method of teaching and learning, we were all surprised by the apparent shyness of the students, the almost uniform resistance to participating in class, and the visible discomfort when interacting one-on-one with the teacher. Clearly, some of the shyness and discomfort was due to never having met us before, but the experience really showed us the importance of building trust with our students and creating a welcoming and comfortable classroom environment. While I have always felt incredibly thankful to have gone to lower, middle, and high school at an institution that places such value on critical thinking, the free expression of ideas, and close relationships between students and teachers, never have I seen tangible proof, to this extent, of the importance of those ideals.
I hope that I don't seem too negative about my experience teaching the sample class. Although it was an incredible challenge, it gave me the perspective that I needed before I begin to teach full-time. Being in front of a classroom and interacting with students was fun and reminded me about what this job and the mission of this program are all about--building relationships. When you sit in a classroom all day and learn about teaching it becomes very easy to lose the sense of connection to the reason that we're all here. Teaching the sample class allowed me to regain that sense of connection and to get more excited about the job that lies ahead.
Weekends
The first weekend that we were here we decided to go to Ha Long Bay. One of the most iconic places in Vietnam, Ha Long Bay sits about three hours southeast of Hanoi in the Quang Ninh province. We expected our trip to be beautiful, but the scenery far exceeded anything that we had imagined. Ha Long Bay is known for its odd rock formations that protrude from the water and are scattered throughout the bay. We spent the first day kayaking, swimming, hiking, and hanging out on the small ship on which we spent the night. The next day we explored a famous cave in one of the mountains in the bay and then headed back to Hanoi. For anyone who is traveling to Vietnam or even to Southeast Asia, Ha Long Bay is a must!
Last weekend, Fulbright organized a trip for us to the Mai Chau Valley. The Mai Chau district is about four hours southwest of Hanoi in the Hoa Binh province and, as such, the trip served as our introduction to the mountainous and rural regions of northern Vietnam. We stayed at a beautiful resort and spent Saturday and Sunday bike riding through the rice paddies and exploring the Thai villages (the Thai community is one of the 53 ethnic minorities in Vietnam).
This weekend, I had the opportunity to stay with a host family in a suburb of Hanoi. The family was incredibly nice and I really enjoyed the opportunity to see what life was like for their family. The host mother cooked some amazing food and I got to spend a lot of time talking to the father about life in Vietnam and the relationship between Vietnam and the United States. Since he works at the American Embassy as an advisor to American Political Officers, and often, high level American visitors, he spoke perfect English and had a unique perspective on the relationship between our two countries.
Culture
I am very much still trying to learn about and adapt to the Vietnamese way of life. People here are, for the most part, incredibly friendly. They seem to genuinely care about their fellow citizens. For example, on Friday night, the hotel staff threw us a big party at which they cooked us a huge dinner and then rented out a room in a nearby bar for Karaoke (which for some reason, definitely unbeknownst to me, is a Vietnamese obsession). We all had an amazing time and it was so nice of the hotel staff to treat us to such a nice night. I should also note that as Americans, the Vietnamese are even more concerned about making sure that we have a positive experience here. Interestingly, I have yet to feel any war-related resentment about being an American. The Vietnamese have a remarkably admirable attitude that seems to be a combination of forgiveness and a desire to put the past behind them.
The younger generation in Vietnam (or what we've seen of them and been told about them so far) has a palpable hunger for productivity and a real desire to connect in a more meaningful way to the world around them. This is not to say that Vietnam has been or is disconnected, but for a country that, until about 40 years ago, struggled for over a thousand years with wars and occupations, there is an opportunity now for Vietnam to grow, prosper, and connect, that did not, until recently, exist. The sense that I've gotten so far (which is admittedly limited) is that the Vietnamese recognize this opportunity and are making strong efforts to seize it.
On the flip side, getting things done, getting questions answered directly, and getting information has proven very difficult. For example, although I am supposed to start teaching in about two weeks, I still do not have an academic calendar, a schedule of the classes that I'll be teaching, or any information on my students. Not only do people seem to dodge responsibility for delivering on requests or for solving problems, but they often do not have the power, information, or organizational structure to do so. This way of doing things is good in some ways and bad in others, but is often incredibly frustrating for me as a foreigner and will definitely take some getting used to.
