Normies

I remember the era that I went into the ESOL industry well: I'd just come back from Taiwan, just turned 21 and the International student boom had just begun, and schools were literally taking anyone. Yes, it would have been far more aggrandising to say that I met some stringent standard but I more or less just walked in. And it was great! I was surrounded by a whole lot of students in their late teens and early twenties from other cultures, not dissimilar to me. I had a fascination with cultures and languages from Asia. I made friendships; I had students at my parties; I was invited to parties; they took part in my events, and it was a pleasure to be in the throng. I was still finding myself at the time. I got into a relationship for the first time, not with a student although I felt close to several early on, and had moved out of my parent's home for the first time. And to be clear, I never "crossed the line" into the emotional and romantic sphere with students, but I did many things that in these days a teacher would be fired for. I have a collection of photos of my crimes: I had a weird send-off for graduating students where I picked them up into my arms for a photo. (In my defence I picked up not just the girls but the guys.) In a ritual I cannot remember the origin of, there is a photo of a female student and I holding the same two cubes of Cadbury chocolate between our teeth. And a certain infamous Mt Eden photo, there were students. Back then I was never spoken to about my conduct with students quite possibly because there was tacit approval to "engage" the students and make sure they have a good time. Or maybe they just didn't know. That is me, but at the time to my knowledge, one maybe more, of my colleagues in my first school were crossing the "relationship" line, and there were certain students who were known to not mind crossing it either. 

The relationship line is a bit of a hairy line to cross in any event, whether in the inappropriate teacher-student dynamic, or just in general life. Making a move or a pass on someone, whether there is someone deliberately on the search for someone to be with, or interpreting signals from someone you are receptive to the interest of is one thing. And there is plenty of less nuanced behaviour that can result when one side is infatuated. Already this year I have had a teacher report an irrational, infatuated student to me, which was very distressing to him. But regrettably it is usually the other way around.

Norms are funny beasts. It would be interesting to know how much #MeToo was a watershed moment, or whether it was just emblematic of the changes in society, where we see much more thinking about consent in all respects, autonomy, mana and hauora. Thinking back to my AIESEC days, people were compelled to do things they did not want to do whether it was to drink an "eggly" (a disgusting raw concoction), drink, strip or whatever. Some would say this was the secret sauce in the organisation to bond people. Others might have trauma from some of these. And then there was the stuff that might happen behind closed doors, perhaps with different degrees on insobriety. I think it reflected quite a bit about the expectations in society around the time. You still hear about some organisations, such as law firms, where there is still a sense of this where only recently some people have stood up to say "no".

I find it quite jarring looking back on my early teaching, and the culture of AIESEC because norms have shifted even in this short time. However, those things might be tame when put next to things seen and done "teaching in Asia". Simply put, there are those that go over to teach or experience the world, but there is also a group who go there mainly for love, either the fleeting sort or something more permanent, and often seek it within the student body. To be clear, they and colleagues are the main people you spend your time with as an expat teacher. Just like my first teaching, a lot of them are going into a group of students who are a similar age to them. There might have also been some who found love within the student body incidentally; they may have been in relationships when going over (either with partner in tow or in a newly established distance arrangement), but who discovered something fresh and new in their place of teaching. Either way though, it was something that was explicitly told to teachers they could not do and yet was something many did anyway. 

Since coming back to New Zealand I have found that within the English teaching area there are so many ex-expats, and it is among them that regrettably there is the highest rate of crossing the line here. Regrettably I know of five individuals who have done so - I won't say the time or name people, schools or anything identifiable. Three were caught revealed and disciplined; another one was known although the complainant did not want to make it an official complaint so no action could be taken directly; and the final one we only knew about after he left while being disciplined for some other piece of unprofessional conduct. What do they have in common? Well, beside being cis-white males (I don't think that's too much to identify them), they are travellers, most ex-Asia. While there was clearly one ratbag, the other four were generally sincere. One even was the "grass" who helped a student report the conduct of one of the others of the five, and who said that he thought it was unacceptable that teachers behave that way to students... 

If I had to categorise this limited group, I'd first say there are the ageing "players", gents who have probably had a way with the ladies in the past, generally handsome, even charming, but with that expectation that girls should like them, and when their fancies are roused, that girls must like them. Then there are the older men who just do not read signals well. There is a certain Asian feminine virtue to be polite, engage positively and never to say "no" explicitly. One such case is referred to obliquely here: Crypticity's abound: Swirling in the calm. The oddest experiences from this was genuine confusion by the teachers involved; one seemingly blaming the complainant: "She just isn't mature enough" (to understand his sincere intent in asking her, his student decades younger than him, out.) The other one most awkward of all, in a disciplinary meeting triggered because he was infatuated so much that in the meeting the teacher was saying "I don't know what went wrong - everything was going so well. And then she stopped responding to my texts and calls." Having to explain to a man who was on his second marriage, not just about ethics and the staff handbook regulations, but also that she just isn't into you, at all, and never was and never will be. And no, you cannot meet her to say sorry because your presence creeps her out. 

And then there is the one case that doesn't really make sense at all without something lying underneath that is unknown.