Just now one of my favourite students (B-C I'll call him) brought me his holiday homework essay to check. I taught him for a week during winter camp, and he's a lovely kid. When I first arrived I remember thinking maybe there was something a bit wrong with him. He acted pretty out of it, and when I had to ask the class questions, I was steered away from getting him to answer. I thought it was because everyone just thought he was hopelessly bad at English, or was a bit *special*. I thought 'well, he's not going to get any better at English if we ignore him', but obviously I didn't know any details, and wanted to be sensitive of the situation, so I left him well alone, but was just really friendly and encouraging whenever I got the chance to interact with him. I am so glad I was.
His extremely well written essay told me about how his mother had recently died of diabetes and how he was struggling with his need to cry and his feelings of loneliness. Turns out he's actually very good with English. His mother must have died very close to when I arrived here. I am so, so glad that even though I didn't know or understand his situation that I was nice to him, and gentle and kind. He is so much that way himself. Poor kid. I really wish someone had told me. Well, maybe I don't. Perhaps if I had known before it would have made me awkward with the enormity of what he was going through. As it was I was able to treat him normally. He seems to respond to me really well - he always seems very pleased to see me, comes over and has a chat. From the outside and my very limited observation, he has a close set of friends helping him through. He is such a sweety. I hope he's in my after-school cases this year.
However, I think it's a bit rough that no one gave me the heads up about this kid. If he'd struck me the wrong way, or I was a different kind of teacher I could have taken his behavior as insolence, unwillingness, or decided he 'just needed to work harder' and commenced pushing him, or picking him out, or something. Because I didn't know. No one gave me the chance to know or understand. I'm not sure of the reason, it could be anything, but I still think it was a delicate situation that I'm very lucky I handled correctly by chance. Good lesson here for me.
As for B-C, he says things are starting to get better and that when he grows up he wants to go into sports massage. Awesome kid.
In other, less weighty news, I made chocolate coated strawberries out of my big bowl of red deliciousness. I brought some to work to snack on. Helps make my day just a little bit brighter. Also, along with the return of the students comes … dun, dun, duuuuun….. *school lunches*! Oh yes! Every cloud does have a silver liningJ. Also, Taiwan on Saturday - hooray! And a small leaving party for Jen on Friday night (not so hooray about the leaving part, but I am adopting her cute as a button rabbit, Kyle). Also, after Taiwan, I have another week of work (possibly teaching some mysterious thing called "spring camp"?), and then a few days more holiday! I was going to try and cancel those last few days to use in summer, but I figure I'm having so much fun playing Star Wars, I'll just take some unpaid vacation in summer if I can and if I want/need to. I want to do a trip to Japan in summer.
I swear I can almost feel spring around the corner. It's still cold. Google tells me it was actually -9 degrees again this morning, but I'm sure it was warmer. I can almost *smell* spring. Possibly just wishful thinking, but if the strength of my will can make the warmth come any sooner, I will use it. I am SO over huge jackets, scarves, hats, gloves. Dresses and shorts sound like heaven. When the heat does get here I am definitely going on another Forever 21 shopping trip. Just the thought of all the cute dresses and cardigans has me drooling.
Dinner last night with the girls was great! Courtney's workmate Mike came too. He's a good guy, but my goodness he has a different way of doing things than me! I find some of his actions and conversation so strange. Like, he'll state something as fact, you know, like he knows about this thing for real. You'll discuss it a bit, and then he'll change his mind and state a different view as a fact. Where I'm from (ok, really just in my family and close friends) you use the words 'I think', or 'maybe', or 'In my opinion' to express something you don't actually *KNOW*. If you go around saying things as a fact, and either change the facts or I find out you are continuously and massively wrong, I'll just think you're an idiot. Not that I think Mike's an idiot, he's only reached the 'slightly ignorant' on the over-all scale so far. There's still chance for redemption J Mike, if you ever read this, I think you're an awesome bloke, but for goodness sake, stop stating your opinion as fact!
Anything else? Well, I got my Jedi Sentinel to level 36 last night. I'm sad because by the time I get back from Taiwan both Mum and Dad will have advanced way beyond me, so I won't get to team up with them anymore. It was lots of fun while it lasted. But, I guess since the level cap if 50, I'll catch up eventually and there an chance of us being able to do end-game stuff together. It was such a neat way to feel connected to them J.
Tonight I want to stop off at the glasses store on the way home to find out about getting some prescription sunglasses, and then have some dinner and do a flashpoint in SWTOR. Sadly, I'll have to do it with a pick-up group, so it'll be probably much messier than when I was with mum and dad L.
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Haha, I got told I was teaching one class today. What I actually got to do was read a list of words to the students for 10 minutes at the end. Bummer! It's so hard to make that fun, for me or them. I just try to smile and sound happy while I do it. Kind of not why I want to be a teacher. I'm afraid that if/when things pick up where they left off before I got to do all my own teaching (which was ages ago now, what with my holidays, winter camp, and the two full weeks of Christmas lessons I got to teach before that) that I am going to start resenting my job, or even worse, losing respect for it. The loss of respect is already well on its way.
The kids are neat though. I wore my new grey blazer to work today, and one of the girls in class goes "Teacher! Style…good!". Made my day a little bit, right there J. Another one of my favourite students, a girl this time wanted to tell me about her knitting. She was working on a scarf during winter camp, and said that now she's finished that and has also made some mittens for her mum. Nice J
And on the way home I saw this. I'm pretty sure they mean Z-Bra, seeing as there's a zebra. Korean's can't really say 'Zee" though, it comes out a "Gee". This is pretty funny. Did no one even use a dictionary when designing this campaign? Fail.
Also, I just got told I have no classes at all tomorrow. I may die at this desk.
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