The Awesomeness Goes On.

I recently attended the graduation ceremony for my postgraduate studies. I now officially have a Master's degree and despite that fact, one of the books that I am using as a teacher, suggests that I wear a lion's mask to entertain a six-year-old. Now THAT's degrading.

If you disregard this however, the rest of my classes remain quite cool. I was correcting some exercises of one of my groups a couple of days ago, and here’s what some of my eleven-year-olds wrote when they had to practice on conditionals:

#1 “If I go to the hairdresser’s, I will get a perm.”

(The student who wrote that was a boy.)

#2 “Unless I join the gym, I will go to the restaurant.”

(It’s either one or the other, clearly).

On my way to another classroom, I heard a student addressing another student in all seriousness: “You won’t be kicking me today cause my leg hurts”. (?!) I then got to the classroom, where a ten-year-old boy immediately greeted me with “Miss, is it OK if my essay is a bit… violent?”. “Show me”, I said. And here’s what he had written, on an essay the topic of which was to write a story starting with “Yesterday evening I went to the cinema with my sister Mary”:

“Yesterday evening I went to the cinema with my sister Mary. While we were walking, we saw our friend Margy. We decided to go to the cinema when Margy went to the street when a bus killed her! We were looking for her but she was stuck on the bus!”

The paragraph was followed by this drawing:

 

And a post-scriptum saying “I wrote this essay because Margy had told me the other day that I have psychological problems”. (Margy is one of his classmates). Personally, I believe that Margy was onto something.

A couple of days later, I had the pleasure of teaching my favourite group, the seventh-graders. I gave them a test, during which a student was mumbling:

Me: “Please stop that...”

Other student: “No, Miss, let him. I’ve trained him to say the correct answers out loud.”

And the same student, half an hour later: “Miss, you can correct our tests now. I already took the liberty of calling 911.”

On a different day but again while teaching the same group, I had my back turned and I was writing on the board when I heard students talking and I said (without turning to look at them): “John, be quiet please.”

John: “How did you…?! I don’t know where the hell that extra pair of eyes of yours is located.”

And a bit later on, when they asked me for a favour:

Me: “Yes. No. Alright, yes.”

Student: “I love your decisiveness.”

And I love my job, dear child, I really do.

You Only Like Your Own.

You know all those adorable things adults say about children, praising the sound of their “uncontrollable laughter”, their “unlimited imagination” or their “pure, longed-for by adults, innocence”? Right. All this is nice and lovely but some children are a tad bizarre. The other day, when I had just left the classroom and another teacher had entered, I heard a usually very quiet and low-profile eight-year-old boy yell at another boy:

“Girl?? You called ME a GIRL???” and with that he threw a book at the boy who had uttered the unforgivable insult. A loud “BANG” was heard and then there was silence.

No, no one died. Or got hurt. Or anything dramatic. The child ducked and the book hit the wall instead. Cunning lad. As for the incident, I’m not quite sure how it ended.

A little girl came to me the other day complaining that one of the boys had kicked her during the break and I'm preeeeeetty sure she had started it. The following image immediately came to my mind:

                          

As for them being innocent, fine, perhaps I can accept that. Sometimes. That does not mean that nine-year-olds do not say things that you would never expect a child age to say at that age. However, they definitely get worse as they grow up. For example, grown-ups are undoubtedly way more earth-bound and that is not necessarily a good thing. Just the other day I realised how much of a cynic I've become when I saw a flashcard with the words “chicken-cow-pig” on it and I immediately categorised them as “meat” instead of “animals”. Gee.

What I love about some children though, is when they have already developed a sense of humour. This cracks me up - maybe too much for my own good. Last week, in my class that consists of 12 and 13-year-old boys, the following happened when I asked a question:

Student 1: “Uh uh uh uh uh, miss, uh uh uh me, me, me!”

Student 2: “Dude, you sound like a dog.”

These particular students though still can be a tad annoying when they don’t write their names on their projects. Or when they write their classmates’ names, which they find particularly amusing...

As with adults, there are all different types of kids. Annoying, funny, sweet, weird, even creepy. There's at least one of every kind. But one thing is for sure... I'm starting to understand why it is claimed that children are “like farts: you only like your own.”

There Is No Santa Claus.

“That’s what I want Santa to get me”, a little girl said the other day in my class, showing her friend a picture in a magazine. It took all the willpower that I have in order not to whisper to her with an evil smirk “There IS NO Santa Claus”. You’d expect that by the age of nine they’d be mature enough not to believe in such a thing as an old fat dude who brings them stuff for being “good”. Then I thought to myself, “stop being such a bitch alright and let the girl enjoy her childhood for as long as she can”.

 

Why be so mean anyway? After all, they are extremely cute at times. That same girl, when writing a paragraph entitled “My family”, started with the following phrase: “My father’s favourite colour is blue and his favourite sport is tennis and his love is my mother, Helen.” This was just way too adorable for my cynical and bitter soul.

However, I do get tempted to be mean when they really make no effort. In another class, I had to correct my students’ essays when I came across with the one that follows. They were given this image and were supposed to make a story out of it:

And that’s what one of my students wrote:

“Alan held the soap when he slipped pressing a ball at children. The soup rained tow custumers, these angry, rushed to wipe. Their aren’t enjoyed noewer. The end owner said theis not pay the bill.”
After a much needed facepalm, I managed to make sense of it... 

After class, I was talking to a colleague of mine about another group of students, our 12 and 13year-olds. This group only consists of boys and I mentioned to her that two of them have been particularly restless lately, probably because they see that I'm easy to laugh. She said that in order to keep them focused we need to make the lesson interesting and she suggested that a way to do that with them would be by being naked while teaching:

“Left boob, Present Perfect Simple. Right boob, Present Perfect Continuous. When do we use each tense and why?” 

I suspect we’d have issues with the management in that case though...

Our younger students are even more restless and less funny, although they have, involuntarily of course, delivered a couple of quite weird/funny lines. Not long ago, a nine-year-old boy came to me and said: “Alex kissed me on the cheek earlier, miss. I think he might be G-A-Y.”

Thus came the facepalm again.

As for them behaving, I think that an unexpected test should do the trick. No??

From Student to Teacher in 7 Days

I submitted my MA Dissertation on September 1^st and a week later I was already shaking hands with my new employer. “I'm sure we’ll have an excellent collaboration”, he said. “I hope I won’t end up in jail”, I thought. Sigh.

It’s really weird how things turn out sometimes. The majority of my friends and acquaintances are surprised when they hear of my current profession and they look at me with a mixture of horror, confusion and disbelief. "You? A teacher?!"

                                                    

And to be honest I am not less surprised myself. I had never thought that I’d have such an amazing time teaching. To be fair, I’ve only be doing it for a month so who knows how soon I’ll be having a nervous breakdown or be in serious need of pills. After all, I started writing a blog about it, didn't I?

In any case, it’s been quite fun so far. On my first day at work I asked my students “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and one of them replied “A stalker”. Or at least, that's what I heard. He had said “A historian” after all. I was losing it already.

I also find it fascinating when they literally translate words from their native language thinking they make sense in English as well. One of them recently wrote: “I like listening to music but my friend isn't a music fan. He is a sportsperson. Me and my friend John both like ice cream but we both hate skeletons. The only person who finds skeletons funny is my friend Irene. She's a boygirl.” (He meant a tomboy, naturally.)

My favourite ones are my 12 and 13-year-olds. We have already bonded and they feel confident enough to joke around me without giving it much thought. One day that they were driving me nuts I couldn’t help but say: “SHUT... Silence!” A student then uttered: “Miss, express yourself freely...”

On another day, I was erasing the board while the students were going out and suddenly I remembered something and said: “Hm, actually, guys...”

Student: “Guys, RUN before she assigns any more homework!!!”

Young legend you.

And my personal favourite so far was when I was in class one day, looking through my bag before finally finding my books and putting them on the desk.

Student (with an expression of relief but clearly joking): “Phew, I thought you were looking for the ruler!”

I laughed hard.

And that’s pretty much how it goes. They’re trying to learn, I’m trying not to lose it.

An old friend told me last night: “You’re teaching?! Oh… You’re passing on your ideas, your worldview; you’ll turn them into your clones… Poor kids!”

I looked at him amused and surprised.

He then said in all seriousness: “You are aware of the fact that they go home and wank after class, right??”

As long as they don’t do it during my lessons, they can do it all they want.