Anyone who spoke to me at any point last year is pretty aware of my aversion to teaching. After being a teaching assistant at HWS for the French department, I was pretty aware that teaching is not my calling. However, if you're a broke twenty-something and you want to travel for free, teaching English is the way to go. Still didn't interest me. When I saw the Fulbright ETA program, why on Earth would I have applied then? Teaching university aged students seemed interesting to me. They were adults who would need minor parenting, because they were enrolled in these English classes, they had an already-established desire to learn English. Well, much to my dismay, I was informed, upon arrival in Ankara that I would essentially be teaching kids in a post-grad year. "Damn it," was really all I could muster.
After nearly eight weeks of teaching, much to my surprise, I actually enjoy my job. Yes, there are days where I want to physically assault a student or two, but really what workplace doesn't have that kind of tension? There are days where I wish either my Turkish or their English were better so I could explain, properly, how they have made my day or even my week with the little things they say or do. There are other days where they pull me out of a pit of dispair without even realizing they are doing anything comical.
For example: The American government gave us these massive pictures for us to use in the classroom. They are supposed to show "average American life" but I mean, what the hell does that even mean, right? To them it means showing our diversity, be it ethnic, cultural, social, or educational. I decided to use these massive pictures (they're probably 18"x 24") and have them describe what is happening in the images. They could come up with their own ideas about what the people are doing or thinking. The whole goal was to get them to have a combined use of the present continuous (I am doing) and the present simple (I do). Unfortunately, Turkish-English dictionaries can have poor translations and they certainly don't take the time to explain nuance. So, I kind of laughed it off when, to describe an image of two boys in wheelchairs playing tennis, my students started the sentence with "The two defective boys are playing..." For some reason, handicapped and disabled are not in their dictionaries. So after five classes of this, it got to be pretty funny. I had to explain that no, people are not defective but rather that word is used for tables, chairs, windows etc. The students were embarrassed, but things like this happen all the time.
For example, the word for a black person in the Turkish-English dictionary is negro. Which, yes, I had to take the time to explain was not a word that people use. In fact, it is a word that is very hurtful to many people. It also doesn't help that Eti, a Turkish version of Nabisco, has a chocolate cookie called a Negro.
Yep, that's right. A negro.
But really, trying to explain such a complex socio-cultural history as racist language, to a bunch of students that think "I am go to the my home" is a correct sentence, is a very difficult matter. It also forced me into some pretty uncomfortable situations. One student, a real rap connoisseur, asked about the word... yes... nigger. I cringe to even write it here. Saying it in a loud enough voice that my students can hear me, I find myself saying, almost yelling, one of the most foul, hurtful words in the English language. I find myself diving into the deep abyss of racial history, I find myself explaining slavery and Jim Crowe to a bunch of Turkish bio-chemical and agricultural students who really, for the most part, couldn't care less.
Then there are the times when students say truly silly things, for example, they are a street walker. When I explained that this means prostitute, they certainly listened up. They often confuse prepositions. One student told me that his window is in his bed. And, while certainly not a roaring hilarity, it makes me chuckle to see how difficult our language really is. Turkish does not have prepositions but rather cases that indicate in, at, on, under, over, to, from etc. which is really a whole kind of nightmare for me, but they are literally having to include words that simply don't exist in their own language.
Then there are the little things, like the name Ufuk, a common name here that (it means horizon), you know, the 12-year-old me finds pretty hilarious. There are also little things like these that I see around the city on a daily basis that, while they can't even come close to China's legendary poor translations, are still pretty funny.
But wait, what's that in the lower right hand corner?
Sexed-semen? Is there any other kind?
Again, heh, my inner twelve-year-old. Snot, heh.
The little white family, with white teeth, on the toothpaste tube, wait, white power?
The NAACP would do well to come to Turkey and do some sensitivity training...
Now again, not to make light of these racial issues but in Turkey, they simply aren't an issue for Turks. Of course that's not to say they don't have their own problems, but their problems aren't defined by race. They simply have no platform from which to begin to understand my aversion to these racially charged words and phrases. Plus, it doesn't help that you simply cannot discuss their historical "problems" and yes "problems" is in quotations because I can be thrown in jail for mentioning them. Best not to, not here any how.
There's also a town called Batman.
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