... children's crying that is. You hear it just about as often in a job like mine. Now it used to bother me that I was often the cause of this crying. It is beginning to lose its impact on me.
I think that anyone who is planning on having kids should teach kindergarten for a year. I firmly believe that if you follow that advice you are very susceptible to influence and shouldn't have kids in the first place. Now kids will cry for darn near any legitimate reason: You wont lend them your board marker so they can draw a cat on your cheek, Sally hit them after only repeated physical provocation or you wont let them have five squirts of strawberry scented hand sanitizer (after already talking you up from one). Sometimes you have to resort to a baser form of language to communicate. Crying fits the bill. I have the second worst grasp of Korean in history (Ken wins) but even I know what a kid wants when he starts bawling his eyes out. A sticker.
Even I have my little crying escape, where i just need to do something to express that I am beginning to lose it. i have started to sing in class when the class gets out of control. Its my little way of counting to ten and not letting the antics and shenanigans get the best of me. I figure its still an English lesson to them. Its really hard to get frustrated when you're singing 'if I only had a brain' or 'I am slowly going crazy' to a room of oblivious kids. its tough to take anything seriously in that circumstance. I am toying with the idea of teaching the kids 'The song that never ends', which will cause me headaches in the short term but could be a legacy I will leave here for all teachers of the future to deal with.
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3 comments:
Forget the song that never ends. Teach them "I'm an asshole" by Dennis Leary. With any luck, scatological curses won't carry the same weight in Korea that they do in North America and any parents who figure the song out will simply think it's a strange anatomy lesson! How great would it be to have your director walk by and give you a thumbs up when your kindergarten class is singing "I'm an asshole"??? That sir, is truly the stuff dreams are made of.
Teach them "Every Sperm is Sacred."
Just so you know, you may have just saved my sanity - I'm going to try that "I am slowly going crazy" song in class. I'm supposed to be teaching my kids music, so it's cross-curricular learning! Woo hoo! Who knew the personal trainer would be teaching the teacher? Well, both of us, but probably not a lot of other people...
Why don't you just teach them some heavy metal song, as you'll get so into it you'll just headbang around the class for the good part of an hour - the kids too scared to move.
Also, I am worth about 20 hits on your blog as I keep checking to see if you have updated it. Jerk!
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