My last day of teaching is on June 23rd. I'm going to miss several things when I blow this Fudgesicle stand, but there is one thing I'll miss that surprises me the most: my favourite kids. They always brighten my day, even when I'm at my worst (read: hungover). They are so much fun, and we spend a lot of class time laughing at stupid shit. They've inflated my ego because they'll laugh at just about anything I do. (I made the mistake of teaching them the K-I-S-S-I-N-G rhyme, and now they'll always sing it about me and some other foreign teacher, ddong, or a toilet.) I also love how every dispute is solved by a round of rock-paper-scissors. I have gotten into the habit of playing RPS with them, with the stakes being if I win, they're crazy, and if they win, I'm crazy.
But I have to wonder if it's not the cultural and language barriers that are filtering out how these kids really are. Maybe these filters are allowing just the cuteness to shine on through. I hated kids and everything they stood for back home. If I were teaching kids back home, I think I'd get annoyed easily with them because I couldn't fall back on the, "oh, those crazy Korean kids." Also, the fact that my day with kids end as soon as the last bell rings really helps me avoid seeing how these kids really are.
I think I'm going to give my favourites my e-mail address and home address so I can receive stupid letters. Though I might not want to do that because one of my kids threatens jokingly that he's going to throw a nuclear bomb on my mother's house. (We usually spend part of the class describing how we're going to destroy one another's families.)
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3 comments:
you know, i was just thinking about this the other day. about how much i like korean kids but is it because they're actually better than kids back home or is it the culture thing filtering out all the brattiness and making them all charming and cute-like. i was talking to seunghoon about this since he HATES kids and told me most korean kids are really bratty and if we could only understand what they're sayin, we wouldn't be loving them so damn much. who knows. definitely gonna miss them though so i understand your pain
Hey, new to your blog. I LIKE it.
"Texts from last night" usually eats up at 30 minutes of my weekly prep on the school computer.
I liked this post too. Fierce debate at my Hogwan: Rock scissor papers? or Rock paper scissors?
is the latter a western Canadian thing..
make sure to spend at least 2 weeks in Laos. it was my favorite place in South East Asia -sigh..memories
-Dave
Cindy: The filter fails to work on some of my kids, and these are the kids I cannot stand for the life of me. The bratty ones are the worst. I implemented a "No Korean" rule in the classroom, which acts as another filter for their bratty behavior.
Dave: Thanks! And it's "rock, paper, scissors." I've never heard of the other version until coming here, and I'm from the Eastern side of Canada.
I'm hoping to spend at least a month in Loas--it's been the highlight of so many travellers' SE Asian tour.
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