Photocopies are a Girls Best Friend

I have been teaching 7th and 8th graders at Truong Vinh Ky through UNESCO for a little over three months now and I am definitely getting better at my job. I have gained most of the student's respect, by being fair and kind (most of the time); I have learned to prepare more advanced lessons for my more advanced classes and simpler lessons for my less advanced classes and most importantly, I have learned the immeasurable importance of being prepared. A class full of 36 seventh graders is not unlike a cage full of 36 hungry lions; if you are not prepared to give them what they want/need, they may very well eat you alive.

UNESCO provides its teachers with two books to use for each grade level. My 7th graders are studying Star Team 1 and Tieng Anh (English Language) 7. My 8th graders are studying Star Team 2 and Tieng Anh 8. In my prescribed class "diary," I am to cover one page per 45 minute class period. A page in Star Team might have a story for listening comprehension, a few grammar questions and a writing activity. Some, I can stretch to fill a full 45 minute period, others, I cannot. It is the latter, which leaves me standing in front of a room full of hungry lions with nothing left to feed them. So when I plan my lesson, I do everything I can to make sure that I have a bag full of meat.

My "meat" consists of flashcards tailored to each lesson, crossword puzzles, dialogues and speaking activities, fill-in-the blank articles and stories for discussion, a potato for 'hot potato,' etc.; anything I can pull out at a moment’s notice to keep the class running smoothly. When I am prepared, my classes are fun, the kids (usually) enjoy themselves and even I (usually) enjoy myself.
The problem I have is not that that all of this extra preparation takes time, because have a successful class, to me, is worth the time spent in preparation, but it is all of the copies required to provide activity sheets to 4 classes of 36 students. If I were at home, I would simply print the copies at home (on recycled paper) or use an overhead projector, but in Viet Nam, without a printer and only a blackboard at my disposal as a teaching tool, it is a little more difficult.

In the beginning, I asked my supervisors at UNESCO to make some copies for me, thinking that as they were providing my other materials, they should provide for any reasonable requests for additional teaching materials that I should require to enhance the lesson. For two days, my requests were granted and I was greeted with stacks of handouts at the beginning of each day and I happily went on my way. After two days, a notice board appeared in the teachers’ lounge stating in block lettering "IF YOU SOMETHING PRINTED, SEND IT TO UNESCO NO LESS THAN TWO DAYS IN ADVANCE. IF YOU NEED PHOTOCOPIES FOR YOUR CLASS, ASK YOUR CLASS MONITOR TO MAKE THEM THE WEEK BEFORE YOU NEED THEM." And so ended my two day run of photocopies…

Given that I hadn’t planned for my classes two weeks in advance to give me time to give my copy requests to my class monitor, my next route was to ask Steven to print out some copies at school. Unfortunately, after a few rounds of copies, he found his copier at school guarded by regular school personal (perhaps to curb the use of the copier for non-school related matters...).

Frustrated with all of the dead ends, I decided to visit the photocopy shop a few shops down from our apartment. In the shop, I was able to print out worksheets and activities that I'd created from a thumb drive and to copy some pages of a book for my next week’s lesson. I figured that as long as I had the originals, I could make the copies at the school (still holding tight to my belief that school materials should be paid for by the school). While I was there, the man who helped me with my copies asked if I could help him with his English pronunciation and I gave him my name and number and left with a promise to meet up the following week.

On Monday morning, I was ready for class five minutes early with my originals and upon entering the class, handed them to my classroom monitor and asked her to make 30 copies of each document. The student looked at me confused and said, "But teacher, we are not allowed to make copies before the class." My face must have conveyed my frustration, because she immediately suggested that I ask her homeroom teacher for permission to let her make the copies now. At her suggestion, I went out into the hall to ask the teacher, who, after giving me a concerned look, and clarifying with the student the exact amount of copies that I needed, proceed to pull at 100 thousand dong note (about $6) out of her wallet. Feeling bad that she had to pay for my copies out of her own pocket, but faced with the knowledge that my class was about to begin and my lesson revolved around these handouts, I quietly thanked her and walked back into class as the monitor ran off with my originals. Not two minutes after I began teaching the lesson, my classroom monitor returned with my documents. "The machine is broken." I quickly forced my look of exasperation into a smile and thanked her for trying. As I turned back to the class, I mentally ran through a list of alternative activities to keep the wolves at bay for another 45 minutes.

As I left school that day, I vowed to go straight back to the copy shop that evening, suck it up and pay for all of the copies that I needed. I had tried every available avenue and found that if I wanted this done, I would have to do it myself. Of course after running to the bank to pick up money for our rent, a private lesson with a new student, rushing home for a quick dinner before my regular evening student came over, my vow got lost in the shuffle.

As I walked back up the stairs as my last student left on Monday evening, it suddenly struck me. The Photocopies! ARGH! Another day without being prepared! Another day when the only thing between me being a creative and interesting teacher, verses a lost, inept excuse for a teacher were my photocopied activity sheets (that I only lacked because I am lazy and cheap!)! I ran up the last few stairs, snatched up the original documents from my bag and went down the street to the photocopy shop. Closed! Using a combination of broken Vietnamese and pantomimes, I inquired at the pharmacy next store about the time that the shop would open the following morning and was told that it opened at 7:00, half an hour after I needed to leave for school. Head hung, I tromped back up the stairs formulating a last minute plan to be prepared for class the following day.

Back inside, with the word 'PHOTOCOPIES' running over and over in my head, I looked back through the books to come up with a lesson that did not require the use of photocopies. For a 90 minute period, UNESCO prescribed a page with an article about using a dictionary, another with a song on it, which the students would listen to and fill in the blanks, and a page in Tieng Anh, in which we would recite a dialogue about 'World Heritage Sites' together. All in all I calculated that it would take me about 10 minutes to cover everything in both books, leaving me with 80 minutes of bleak, uncomfortable nothingness. I needed my photocopies! I had copied and pasted pages of a Vietnamese-English dictionary onto one page and planned to write 8 words for the students to look up in Vietnamese and then use in a sentence in English to practice using a dictionary. We would then write the sentences on the board and correct them and recite them as a class. I had printed an article on children in Afghanistan for my more advanced classes, in which I had taken out words to use as a listening activity and written discussion questions for them to compare and contrast their lives with the kids in the article. For my less advanced class, I had printed out interviews from Kids Around the World, a website that interviews kids from different countries with basic questions like, 'What is your name?' 'Where do you live?' 'Who is in your family?' etc. With my photocopies, I was prepared, creative and competent. Without them, I was....not.

While I was going over my books, the phone rang and to my surprise and delight, it was Giai, my new friend from the copy shop. He was calling to confirm that our lesson was next Sunday, not that evening, presumably because he had seen or heard from the ladies at the pharmacy that I was there inquiring about the shop. I assured him that our lesson was indeed on Sunday, but told him that I would make him a deal and help him for 20 minutes that evening, if I could come over and make some copies. He told me that he would be happy to help me, but that he was just leaving for his evening English class. Trying another angle, I asked what time he got up in the morning. He said something that sounded like '3 a.m.' and began explaining that he needed to get up early to finish all of his work. Not wanting to impose myself on anyone at 3 in the morning, especially someone I had just met, I tried again.

"What if I came over at 6:30, could someone let me in to make copies?"

"Coffee? Well, I'd like to have coffee, but I have to.."

"No, no. Not COFFEE. COPIES. I would like to come over and make some copies."

"I see.. Um, I could ask my sister if she would like to have coffee with you tomorrow morning..."

"No, no, no, no. Not coffee. Copies. Copies. Like PAPER copies...!"

"If you would like to have coffee..."

"Don't worry about it. Please tell your sister that I can't have coffee because I have to work, but I will see you on Sunday at 5:00..."

I fell asleep that night thinking about photocopies, confident that my usually sound sleep would be interrupted by visions of me running after photocopiers only to have them always just out of reach.

This morning, I woke up early, originals in hand, ready to scan the streets from the back of a xe om, from our apartment to school, in search of an open copy shop. Having been passed by two full mini-buses, two days in a row, I had veered from my routine the previous morning and taken a new xe om driver to school. Luckily for me, he was in the same spot this morning and I flagged him down, happy not to have to risk getting lost while I was busy looking for a copy shop.

We passed numerous shops with their signs proclaiming, 'PHOTOCOPIES' in big block letters above roll doors locked down tight. As we passed each one, I calculated the time and distance back to it if we reached the school without finding an open shop. Finally, I spotted two copiers crammed into a small shop on the opposite side of a narrow alley. I motioned my driver to stop, which he did immediately, causing a near pile up of motorbikes behind us. I jumped off the bike and picked my way though the oncoming onslaught of bikes to the store, where the shop keeper was photocopying identification documents for a man dressed in business attire.

As I waited patiently while the man made double sided copies for his customer and trimmed them of all excess paper, I threw my driver apologetic glances, which he returned with patient smiles. When it was finally my turn, I glanced at my phone and saw that it was 7:00 a.m., leaving me just 15 minutes before the first bell. I explained to the man in Vietnamese that I needed 18 copies of each document and watched as he took my documents and set them one at a time onto the face of the copier.

After he handed me the second stack, I noticed that they were decidedly smaller than I would expected 18 pages to be. Upon counting each stack, I found that he was only making 8 copies of each document. When he handed me the next stack, I tried to explain that I needed 'muoi tam' (18) of each not just 'tam' (8). He looked at me with a confused expression on his face and said something in Vietnamese that I took to be the price of each page. I told him that I understood, but continued to explain that I needed 'muoi tam' pages. We continued this dance, until he, frustrated, marched into the back of the shop and out through a door that led, I presumed, to his house, leaving me in a state of barely controlled panic as the clock ticked ever closer to the ringing of that first bell. After about a minute, he returned, alone, not with the interpreter I thought he'd gone to get and I handed him a paper on which I had written '18.' "Muoi Tam," I said. "Ah, Muoi Tam!" and off he went to make me 10 more copies of each stack. At exactly 7:12, I was back on the bike and on my way with a bag full of photocopies.

Prepared as I was for my lessons, the kids enjoyed the activity, their homeroom teacher sat in the back with a satisfied smile and I left feeling like I had actually done a decent job. I left school vowing to spend my next free day planning, printing and making copies for as far ahead as I could plan.