“You know,” my dad used to tell me whenever I complained about how much work I had for school. “Teachers do a lot more work than the students.”

Each time I would roll my eyes and scoff. Please. All teachers do is give you work to make your childhood as miserable as possible. Duh.

I thought this despite the fact that for ten years, I watched my dad toil away as a public school teacher, first at my elementary school, then at my middle school (that really helped my social life). I watched him color in a huge, poster-board picture of a train, for a unit on transportation, one weekend over the summer on a trip to Flagstaff. I stayed after school with him every day, sometimes until five in the evening, and got to school with him as early as seven in the morning. When he got swamped, he paid me ten cents for every test I graded. This was particularly fun when I got to the tests of my friends or people I didn’t like.

It was never my dream to be a teacher, but then I also thought I’d never go to Wellesley and that I’d never want to live and work in China. So it wasn’t until I did all those things that I realized just how much work it takes to be a teacher. Or, at least, a good teacher. My life would be a lot easier if I didn’t actually want to teach my students.

So was it the long hours I’ve been working? The endless lesson plans, pressure from the school, or cranky parents that made me realize the burden of being a teacher?

Um, no. I realize how much work teachers do precisely because I don’t have to teach that much. I teach 7 90-minute periods a week. I’m done with class by 11:40 every morning Monday to Thursday. Friday? No class. And despite the fact that I teach less than I sleep, I am still stressed and anxious about teaching. I spend a long time lesson-planning (the agonizing ritual of me sitting at my computer Googling some variation of “esl lesson plans” and mumbling “What the hell am I going to teach these kids?!”). And I only need two lesson plans a week. How do the real teachers come up with new ones EVERY DAY?

I decided that last week, the third week of classes, I would do the one lesson that had a staggering success rate last semester. Part of me thought I should put it off for when I’m really desperate, but let’s face it, much as I love my students (and for the most part, I really do) I’m always operating on the frontier of desperation and surrender.

It’s a well-known lesson plan in the teaching world: The Peanut Butter and Jelly lesson. Students have to write clear instructions detailing how to make a PB&J, and then the teacher does literally what the directions say. “Put the peanut butter on the bread”? Pick up the jar of peanut butter, place it on top of the bag of bread.

Obviously, I’m more lenient with detail than teachers of native English speakers. I spend the first half going over all the things they need to know, especially the difference between ‘put’ and ‘take,’ and then I explain to them this crazy American snack, which almost none of the students have eaten before.

I break them into groups and tell them to write me instructions. It usually takes them about 20 minutes to write the necessary four to eight steps.

Some groups don’t get the first step, even when I tell the class the first step should be “Open the plastic bag of bread.”

Almost all the instructions leave out the jelly entirely. I can’t figure out if it’s because the students forget, or if they just don’t like jelly. A fair portion of instructions tell me to ‘spread the bread.’ Most ‘sandwiches’ end up open-faced, because kids tell me to ‘connect the breads.’ A surprising number of groups tell me to use three pieces of bread. The biggest mistake I get is ‘take two pieces of bread on the plate.’ Since I hammer the difference between put and take, I don’t waver on that one.

A majority of the groups get something edible. Here’s what I find acceptable: First, open the plastic bag of bread. Take out two pieces of bread and put them on the plate. Next, unscrew the lid of the peanut butter jar. Using the knife, scoop out some peanut butter and spread it on one piece of the bread. Unscrew the lid of the jelly jar. Using the knife, scoop out some jelly and spread it on top of the peanut butter. Place the other piece of bread on top of the peanut butter and jelly.”

I try not to be too much of a hard ass, but I definitely draw the line at prepositions and put and take, because I stress those a lot in the first part of the class.

While the promise of food definitely perks the kids up, I think a big reason all the students say this is their favorite lesson is because this isn’t something Chinese teachers do. Education here is all about memorization and test-taking, not applying skills in fun (or edible) ways or actually using what you’ve learned. But maybe I’m just flattering myself into thinking my class is fun at least one day of the year, since my kids generally muster about as much enthusiasm as a vegetarian watching someone roast a whole suckling pig. This is them at their most animated:

*Interestingly, my pictures are coming out huge. I’m too lazy to re-upload them, so I’ll work on making sure you aren’t visually assaulted next post.