Lost and found in translation

A couple of days ago I was called into the office of the Director of the Academy I work for. That is Mr. Choo, the same Mr. Choo that met me at the airport.
My only real dealings with Mr Choo were pestering him in the early days to turn on the hot water in our apartment, something he forgot to do for some days, chuckling as he informed me it was another cold shower that night. I also had the pleasure of being observed by him.

I must stress at this point that Mr Choo has never taught a class in his life, nor does he speak any English. However, he observed my entirely English spoken class none the less. The class was well planned if I may say so myself. I had the students split into two teams and got them to write quiz questions from a text, for the opposing team. I supplemented this with my own questions. A question lesson if you will.
Mr. Choo’s feedback (he was somewhat shocked I asked for any) was that I should ask more questions, especially with such a young class. It was my oldest class, and so with that I learned not to take him too seriously.

All this leads us back to the office I shared with him and a translator, on a fine winter’s day. He had called me in to ask how I teach. I told the translator my methods, she proceeded to nod and stay silent. Mr. Choo began to tell me what I should be doing, namely one particular thing I should be doing. He told me, or rather the translator did: “you prepare too much, too many resources, just speak to the children.” I nodded and asked back, “OK, can you give me any advice how to go about that, what to talk about?” He nodded again when my words were finally spoken to him.
The advice I received was wise indeed: “prepare more, more resources.”

Now the quick ones amongst you may have spotted something here, but being a little slowly I confirmed my position with him. “So I should prepare less by preparing more?” I looked at him, expecting him to smile at any moment. Maybe I had the greatest boss in the all the world, the most dry humoured boss I could wish for. My appetite for irony was whetted; I’ve been starved, spending my time socialising with Americans.

Sadly he nodded in confirmation and looked quite pleased with himself. Prepare less by preparing more, it’s like a retarded version of the Cub Scouts.