Now - I'm sure you're wondering why one of my students told me that I'm going to be a good mother, especially after last week's episode of smacking a kid (David) in the forehead with the door. Please read on.
The drama of this past week has revolved around one main character: David. This poor kid is one of the class clowns, but instead of just being the funny guy, he gets picked on constantly by others. I'll admit that most of the time he brings it on to himself, but some of the things that have happened to him!
The kids aren't allowed to chew gum in my class. This is a rule that has been set by the school, but I enforce it mostly because I can't stand to hear them smacking their lips, blowing bubbles, and snapping their gum. And the gum they chew isn't just chewing gum like Trident or Orbit (my personal favorite). It's BUBBLE gum that they buy at a little stand near the cafeteria. It comes in gum ball form, and they end up with a huge wad of gum in their mouths that they can't even BEGIN to chew discreetly.
I've begun starting the class saying "If you have gum, spit it out now. This is your only chance." So, half the students groan, tell me I'm horrible, and spit out their gum. The same students every day. David and Jahir always spit out their gum at this point. But 5 minutes after sitting down, they put ANOTHER piece of gum in their mouths. Really? You KNOW I'm going to tell you to spit it out. And half the time, when I tell them AGAIN, they say, "BUT TEACHERRRRRRRRRRR, it's a new pieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeece." I tell them "You KNOW I'm going to make you spit it out. It's not MY fault that you're throwing your money away AS WE SPEAK." David and Jahir always take multiple trips to the garbage can to spit out their gum.
David was annoying everyone in class on Monday, and, unfortunately for David, he was being annoying when Jahir had to spit out his third piece of gum. Instead of putting it in the garbage can, he PUT IT IN DAVID'S HAIR. Peanut butter, anyone? David starts screaming like a girl (I'm not kidding - yesterday he even said, "Teacher, do you want to hear me scream like a girl?" And then he lets out this piercing shriek.) and yelling "TEACHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR DID YOU SEE WHAT JAHIR JUST DO TO ME?!?!" So I scold Jahir, fighting to keep a straight face, and I begin to pick the gum out of David's hair.
On Tuesday, David thought that he figured out a way to keep his gum when I told him he had to spit it out: put the gum at the very back of his throat, so when he opens his mouth to show me that it's not there I don't see it, and then cough it up when I go back to my desk. Well THAT blew up in his face.
I told David to spit out his gum, so he faked it, putting his new plan into action. I am not as stupid as the kids think I am. I KNEW that David didn't spit out his gum, and so I inspected his mouth longer than usual. I knew he "swallowed" it. When I walked away, David, being satisfied because HE thinks that I think that he spit out his gum, starts coughing to cough up this wad of gum. He was coughing more than usual. It turns out that the wad of gum traveled too far down David's throat. He realized that he couldn't cough it up. He was standing by the garbage can holding his throat coughing. The kid was literally choking on his gum. I didn't know what to do.
A kid named Sergio - with a name like that he even SOUNDS like he would be someone's knight in shining armor, and it turns out that he was David's - LEAPED up from his desk and begins POUNDING on poor, poor David's back. The gum landed on the floor. David's eyes were watering, but he was laughing really hard none the less. I guess it takes a near-death experience for the kid to learn to just spit out his fricking gum.
Wednesday, I thought that David would be a new man and NOT put a new piece of gum in his mouth after I told him to spit it out. Wrong. But oh well. At least he didn't try swallowing his gum every time - he just spit it out, wad by wad.
On Wednesday, all of the kids in David's class had little clay fetuses that they made for a different class (tutoria, but I have no idea what that means). They were actually really disturbing and gross, mostly because they were just little clay babies with umbilical cords coming out of their stomachs. David had one. "Sara, I want you to meet my son," he said to me upon entering class. (Side note: David is the only student that calls me just Sara and not Teacher or Teacher Sara. The kid kills me.) I told David that I would babysit his son during class, because I knew that these ugly fetuses were going to be a distraction.
I was partially right. It turned out that the CLAY caused the distraction.
Throughout the class, the kids were throwing clay at each other, David of course being the main culprit. Apparently, on David's way up to my desk to ask me a question, he threw a tiny piece of clay at Katya. When David got to my desk, Katya followed him. Before I knew it, Katya is RUBBING a pea-sized piece of gray clay into David's hair. Now I am completely aware that a pea is NOT that big. It gets bigger and messier, however, when being rubbed into someone's hair. David starts screaming like a girl and rubbing at his hair, making the situation much worse than it may have been had he let me handle the situation.
So, for the next five minutes of class, I helped students coming up to my desk with their worksheets while picking clay out of David's hair. Upon this scene, Cristian, another student, comes up to my desk and says, "Teacher, you will be a good mother." Thank you, Cristian, but in all honesty, if the way I teach/"take care" of my students is any reflection on the kind of mother I will be, I probably shouldn't have children. I DID get all of the clay out of David's hair in the end.
The worksheet that the students were working on have to do with wishes - the topic of the lesson we're on. I found the worksheet on the internet. The students had to fill in the blanks with a verb in the past tense. Example: "I wish I ________________ Chinese. Shopping in Beijing is hard!" Now, the kind of answer that this statement is prompting is "could speak" or "spoke" in the blank. These are two sentences that I got back when a couple students asked me to look over their sheet: "I wish I wasn't Chinese. Shopping in Beijing is hard!" and "I wish I could be Chinese..." I started laughing SO hard at the "I wish I could be Chinese." sentence, especially because it came from shy Diego, who sits right in front of my desk. When he asked why I was laughing, I said, "Diego, you want to be Chinese?!" and his face got all red as I explained what the answer should be. It was hilarious.
Until next time,
Sara the Supermom
No comments:
Post a Comment