Hello From the Hanoi Motel Six

Xin chao, y feliz Pascua tarde.

[Note that I meant to post this last week -- I've sure you'll forgive me for the halting of time.]

It has been about three months since I taught at the school here. And what little twisty nucleic acids can we thank for that?

I’ve managed to do some private tutoring, lots of pacing around, some musical sleight of hand, and some other remote giggish work for my old job at Portland Community College. The private lessons started in person and migrated online as we proceeded to lock our doors, run around in circles, and stomp on whatever virus spore shimmied its way through the bidets.

It is a simple life. Unfortunately, my little ground level studio with no windows to the outside isn’t the most pleasant place for a living time-capsule. I think of the spring coming to the northern forest and ponder nicer places, as I’ve done too often in my life: phoebes and Louisiana waterthrush arriving in northeastern North America, wrens and song thrushes waking up in northern Eurasia, orange-crowned and black-throated gray warblers in the Pacific Northwest coming to a screeching halt with their legs in midair, like in cartoons, panting for breath after a short migration--I’m the expert here, and I’ll tell you how birds work.

Like many an expat in Vietnam, I’ve tried to convert my teaching into online work. There are many services, especially out of China (Cambley, VIPKid, etc.) that facilitate paid teaching via web browsers or their own apps. I realized early on that the voluminous digital gig economy with its random hours, zero benefits, and low pay is whistle-beckoning me.

My-oh-my how I tire of inaccessible apps and websites. In fact, I’ve been tired of them for decades, which goes to show how much progress has gone down on this front, and may ironically explain my insomnia. It certainly demonstrates why heavy-handedness is often called for. When accessibility is considered a matter of charitability--special needs--a nice thing to do, but sometimes not practical, then consequences need to apply. We must make ignoring us impractical for those who will make barriers--the appointed shapers of the conduits of our existence. The access that disabled people do have wasn’t born without a fight.

               Anyway, so far, after spending hour upon hour with these platforms for teaching English to speakers of other languages, like VIPKid, Cambley, and DaDa, I feel as though I am digging myself a bottomless hole in space. I think to myself, there’s a good chance any complaints I have will mean as much as a mosquito to them, and that they deal with zero accountability for application and website accessibility. This may be especially true if they are based outside North America or the EU, where at least some hard-fought legal precedence is established, however tenuous. If I was but an insect in the U.S. job market, I’m one in outer space now. That’s my sense of the global online circuit.

March rolled around with no prospects of schools opening. Some new cases began to grind business to a further halt, evaporating a few silent, cautiously hopeful weeks. Many fellow expats could be seen drinking their day away, assisted by a $1.30 beer platform. Others told me that they were plenty busy on the ball, and told me what English teaching service they were using. “You should totally sign up!”

A really pleasant American fellow expat told me about his successful swap to VIPKid for English teaching. He expounded on their ample virtues and pay, and told me they are looking for Americans like us to teach English online. This was perfect for him, especially as he was to relocate fancy free to Chiangmai. It is nice to be as free as a bird. To think you can get a job all the time, live on a shoestring and live the itinerant, interstellar hip existence. I wish I was like others. I try to remind myself that I am rightfully an adult, with all the liberties and induction of ego inflammation entailed by age and androgenesis. As I walk down the street or try to start a conversation, I would like the people I encounter to use a vocal tone that says, “You are a human being just like we are.”

 No, I don’t need them to count the three stairs to the mall entrance. No, I’m not afraid of your silent dog--I didn’t know he was there until you apologized. Unfortunately, as I dig a bottomless hole in space, I realize I might not be able to fake being the steel monkey I’m supposed to be. I can’t fill out forms on these Pho-king websites because buttons are not properly labeled and edit boxes are not sufficiently marked up to allow one to navigate without a mouse or touchpad via a text-to-speech screen reader device (like Apple’s proprietary Voiceover, or JAWS for Windows). No, I need help--just not with stepping off a curb. Help from a friend is enough to get me through the steps of a simple online job application, but when the web platform or standalone app to communicate with students has the same problems, it’s no job for me no matter how many master’s degrees of separation I hold. Crikey.

I contacted VIPKid about their futile app, website, and instruction materials, offering to help them improve. “I’m sure they will find some work for you” my Chiangmai-bound friend said.

“Your teaching career is impressive and moving to us. Unfortunately, after discussion, investigating the limitations of our online teaching portal and curriculum, we cannot accept your application at this time. We are a young company that is growing and has the mission to prepare every child for the future world, and we hope to in the future be able to meet the needs of EVERY student. But unfortunately, at this time we are not able to accommodate teachers and students in these situations.”

Anyone say, ‘special needs?’ We are not yet considered a part of the future.

Heartbreak is the name of the mouthless moth that emerges from a chrysalis of wasted time. BS is the wasted time.