Rolland With The Punches: School: Closing out January

January has flown by and as usual, it was an eventful month at school. I'm falling for my kids more each day. I'm learning more and more about each one's individuality. I was impressed I knew their names after the first month, but now I know their favorite colors and foods and hobbies. It's not something I can necessarily put into words, but working with children, you can never be blue. From morning when I wake up, until six in the evening I can be bored, tired, grumpy or any other negative emotion, but as soon as I enter the classroom and see a student I'm instantly all smiles. I tell stories about my students like mothers and fathers talk about their children. I guess that's normal.
Teachers are supposed to be role models, but for me the students are my role models. They remind me what it's like to be six years old, naive, worry free and optimistic. I feel teaching keeps me young, and it's the best excuse for coloring whenever I want. My boss said the other day, "the key to being a great teacher is to be a kid." Then she said I was the biggest kid she had. That was the greatest compliment I'd ever received.

Moving on to a few stories from the classroom. I'm sure I will miss a few because I'm running off memory. I need to keep a running notebook of the things and situations that happen daily at school.

I think I start most sentences about my classes with, "my favorite class," but it seems at this point of teaching, all of my classes are my favorites. Each class is my favorite for a different reason and my favorite depending on my mood. However, my Monday night, 7:15 Small Star class is 100% my favorite. It's a small class and we always have spare time for extra, fun activities. I never have a TA (teacher assistant) in this class and we have a system that works well for us. Our routine is pretty laid out and they know what's going on and when. They are little adults and we don't have discipline problems. Anyway, their favorite game, which is also mine, is the freeze game. I play music, pause it, say "freeze," and the first to move has to read the sentence written on the board. My iTunes didn't properly sync my playlist yesterday so I didn't have a good song for dancing and made a sad face and said, "no music today." With a smile, Tony points to the computer and said, "play on the computer." So I did. My song for the week is "Uptown Funk," by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars. The kids loved it, too.

So, we're playing the game as usual, dancing and having a grand time, and at one point when I pause the music, Frank lets a fart out. With that, the whole class, including myself, loses their posture in a fit of laughter. Because when you're six, or 24, farting is hilarious.

In my older level class, we were covering the five senses. I gave the students an example of each and they had to make their own statement using one of the senses. As I'm walking around monitoring, Helen proudly said to me, "I've got one." I go to check her workbook and she has written, "It feels like a shit." With what I'm sure was the wrong, and completely unprofessional response, I said, "are you sure you didn't mean smells like?" She said, "Yes. It feels like."
Earlier, in the same class, we'd learned hieroglyphics so I had the kids draw their own. Helen had a compilation of faces like happy and confused, then at the bottom right corner, a pile of poop with a smiley face. I don't know what Helen's fascination with poop is. But to most people (with a sense of humor) between the age of birth and 100, poop is funny.
Now don't worry, I told Helen not to say 'shit' anymore, but it was still a proud moment for me. The weird part is, I never curse in front of the kids so she didn't get it from me, but it was still a highlight from my day.

In my other upper level class, Bill, who is cool but gives me a headache every class because he refuses to not speak Chinese, even though his english is great, says, "shit" about six times in class and finally I have to say, "Bill, stop saying shit." I realize that wasn't the correct response so I recovered with, "don't say bad words." Whoops! :)

In a reading and writing class one of my weaker students wrote a really inspiring story. Although she didn't use the assigned vocabulary I was still really impressed with her creativity and language use. She wrote a story about a woman being approached by a talking dog and the dog telling her all sorts of philosophical things. And I don't know if the following is a song lyric, book or movie quote, or just something original from my student but it was really inspiring to me and read on a day I really needed to hear something like this. Here is what she wrote:

"The dog said to her, 'If you want to go back in time to save your history, you must go quickly because time waits for no one and we need time to survive. To survive we will be more perfect.'"

It's a bit unclear at some points, but the main idea is understandable enough. I loved what she wrote, yet, I'm really proud of her for writing a story with such great English.

I've written many times about my class with Wendy (bug-in-a-bag-girl) and how this was one of my first classes. Well, I lost a student from that class this week. Noodles' parents decided she was too young to be learning so much at once. I'm very sad she's gone, but we were able to take a goodbye selfie, (which was later photobombed by Baggio.) Also, I'm really proud of her parents for pulling her out because so many Chinese children are overloaded with learning and often miss out on the joys of being a kid.

Lastly, when I arrived in Beijing my school was beginning this six-week hell we call Summer Course. The local schools go on holiday and the students, instead of enjoying a holiday, come to us for additional English classes. Phonics courses, story courses and geography type classes are offered. For the teachers this means 12-hour days, six days a week, putting us somewhere around a 60-hour work week. Now, I did the 60-hour work week life when I was 18 and working at the vet lifting 80-pound sacks of cow feed and 100-pound dogs and occasionally chasing a loose ferrel cat. Well, that was nothing compared to the high-energy and obnoxious perkiness required of teaching kids all day, ha.

Now we are starting Winter Course next Monday. Luckily, this is only two weeks. However, it's been six months since I've had to wake up at six a.m. everyday so wish us all luck. I volunteered to be a lead teacher which means nothing more than stapling hundreds of readers together for the past week and miraculously acquiring no paper cuts.

There are a million other stories I'm sure I could share, but am drawing a few blanks. This month I will keep a note of what happens. For now I'll sign off and post a few pictures.

Writing on the floor with dry erase markers is my favorite. However, I learned this week not to leave my markers unattended when we have our breaks because this is what I walked into after break. They were doing math problems all over the floor. Only Chinese students would do math problems. Jethro knows the first 10 digits of pi (3.14.....).

Saying goodbye to Noodles. She initiated the duck face. :)

Baggio photobombing. Yannay in the background <3

So I've spoke about how much the Chinese focus on education and learning. If it isn't regular school, it's EF (or a similar English school), art class, music lessons, a sport, etc. There is no such as free time for Chinese children. In my middle level class we were learning time and explaining routines and at what times we do things. The students had to fill in their own time table and they all looked pretty much like this. Such a tragedy.

Counting...

This class learned habitats, animals, can and can't of animals actions and so forth. I told the students to create their own animal and describe it or choose an animal and draw it in it's habitat. I don't know where my kids get their knack for drawing, but it is certainly not from me. I can inspire the creativity, but the talent is solely them. Here are a few of my favorites!

Ana and her horsebird

Harry and his TurtleBee :)

Henry and a HorseButterfly

Ana and her favorite animal: rabbit.

My students captured me here while I was running a gameshow with them in class. The weekends are agonizingly long sometimes but the students really do make it worth it. Even when they're driving me crazy. I really think this picture captures me completely as a teacher.