Arnie had it right

I remember when I saw the movie ‘Kindergarten Cop’ back when I was 10 years old. That triumph of cinematic storytelling impacted everyone so very heavily at the time but even still it was hard for me to think that it would be so true to life for me. For those of you not familiar with it (or for some reason whose brains did not find it needed to commit the movie to enduring memory) I will give you a brief rundown;



Arnold Schwarzenegger was a tough cop, he was so adept at keeping the criminal world in line that they decided to give him a tougher mission. Put him in a room with a bunch of 5 and 6 year olds and make him promise not to kill any of them (not even just one as an example to the rest like they do in Harvard). We quickly see that big brawny Arnie is reduced to relying on his wits and acting chops to keep these adorable little munchkins that are still too young to have learned the concept of sanity in line. So he yells at them and then treats them like army cadets which magically keeps them from eating glue. Then he decides to go back to crime fighting and ends up getting the school burned down. And there was a ferret in the movie too.


The parallels here are almost too many to count. I look at my experience as a scale model of that. Sure I don’t teach as many kids as him or for as long, but my classrooms are a lot smaller and so am I. I too, having no actual training in teaching, must rely on my acting training and my wits to keep them in line. Much like Arnold those don’t get me too far in life (I should marry a Kennedy) so I sometimes feel myself overwhelmed. I even half considered making the kids run around and jump and do calisthenics or something but the main trouble class is way too overcrowded for that, and there’s no use in making the class army style anyway. For all the males at least they’ll get quite enough of that when they turn 18. So although I know there is a lesson that I can glean from Kindergarten Cop, I’m not sure what it is. The sad/ funny thing is that movie is probably the most relevant training material I’ve seen.

My littlest class just got a new student today. Another one. That brings the class total up to ten students. Three of which now speak no English whatsoever. Two others I cannot keep in their seats, and if I stop paying attention to either of them for even a second they will either start taking off their clothes or eating the books. There are four average students, which get no attention due to the constant need to keep the aforementioned five in check and get no challenging work because there is no chance to teach them something new so it is constant review- but they are at least content to be relatively quiet most of the time and rub their cheeks against my arm hair now and again. Then there is one bright kid, very well behaved, who enjoys English to the point that he is now constantly fighting for my attention (so nice to be needed) so he can practice talking to me more. Now there is obviously a simple way to deal with this. Perhaps not an easy way but a simple one. There has to be. I just have no idea what it is. It probably has something to do with teaching experience. I hope not, I hope it’s a pill.

This was the class that was getting stickers at the end of every class in which they did not misbehave, which I’ve been experimenting not doing now and then. Its not a perfect system, and often I felt I was rewarding kids for doing nothing. Honestly if one of the ten kids just didn’t make a ruckus during the class they got a sticker for being good, despite the fact that they did nothing English related. I’m going to try only rewarding good behavior and use of English skills, but its tough as it isn’t a level playing field. In any case this is only a temporary thing, until the end of the month. The school is aware the class is mismatched and it seems they just want me to do damage control. We have three kindergarten classes graduating at the end of the month and that’s when this one will be split up with some of them moving on and some of them staying at the base level. The only reason they accepted the kids into the class before the graduation was to get the extra tuition from the parents. Its not a horrible system really, and it’s the only way the class could really run but some days it is very very tough. So I guess the lesson is to keep the stickers in until I can figure out a better discipline system and try to buy a ferret somewhere (and no they don’t farm them for food here).


Well tomorrow’s another day last time I checked, and its bound to be a good one. Happy Trials!