I scream, you scream, we all scream for…

It’s sometimes tough to be teacher of the year every single day. Part of the troubles that I have may stem from the fact that I am not actually a teacher, not in the literal ‘trained to do the job’ sense of the word. Now nothing bad happened today, aside from being unexpectedly exhausted all day (and I had a class of kids call me fat-but that’s not the story I’m telling today). It was one of those mornings that I just never completely woke up and my body just decided to hang at the halfway point until the next round of sleep came rather than getting the lead out.

Luckily though it was a Monday and that meant that I could take things slow with my classes. Due to the unfortunate fact that the weekend involves two consequetive days where the kids are not at English school it is unavoidable that by the time Monday rolls around they have just plain forgot the language. It is a well documented phenomena (by me, peer review by my friend Ken pending) but seems to stress the kids out only about as much as losing a penny down a sewer grate. So everything was back to basics and the day was passing in that odd way that time is wont to do.

It was only during my last class that my kids developed any animosity towards me. Although neither of us is really to blame. I don’t have textbooks for most of my classes this term, which is alright since most of my kids haven’t been given textbooks either. It really allows me to just freestyle things in that way that all highly trained teachers like myself excel in. For this class I had picked out one of the most challenging books the school had and photocopied the pages for my students, seeing as how these are pretty much the most advanced kids at the school. Now they thought that The Case of the Missing Pie was too hard and wanted to switch to a four sentence book called Dinosaur Bones but I tried to convince them that they needed a harder book to expand their vocabulary rather than stick to stuff they knew. It would also tie into their grammar studies with their other teacher on past tense verbs and comparative adjectives.

Well obviously that last statement was going to be a show stopper, and I’m sure you can think of nothing that could eclipse such a shining sentiment in a bored child’s mind.

Of course moments after I said this they saw Nick’s class walking through the hall back into class, each of the students waving an ice-cream cone at us through the window. Nick had taken them on a ‘field trip’ down the street to the convenience store and bought them all a treat. My class understandably began petitioning me for equal treatment. I soon discovered that there are tougher things to explain to Korean kids than the English language, such as your views on positive reinforcement techniques in the classroom and the educational value of a trip to the 7-11. In the end they listened to me politely and I oringinally thought they understood that I was saying I’d be happy to give them a similar prize for good work in the classroom as they all stopped their frantic pleas. Truth is I heard them say to eachother in Korean that it was apparent that I just didn’t have any money. I sighed and let it slide, if I were in their shoes I would have wanted some ice-cream too. So in truth we both learned valuable life lessons. They learned that Nick is a way more fun teacher to have than me. And I learned how to say no to kids begging for ice-cream, which is a skill that every adult should have. I guess this is growing up.

PS just in case I never remember to update you the missing blueberry pie was in fact eaten by scraps the dog, not Tubby as the gang originally thought. You’re welcome for the closure.