Weak, in reflection

Kids, like wild animals, can smell weakness and fear. This past week, I fear, I've been all kinds of a hot mess. Unlike in the corporate world, when you feel sick, you can't take off as a teacher in rural China. I've found out now that when you're weak with disease, the other 54 people in the room know it. I'm sick! My head aches! I'm dehydrated! I still have to teach you about pencils, pens, and what color it is. Welcome to my week, in reflection, an outline of my current classroom, one week after 10 days of vacation. 

Negotiating, chattering, crying, slapping, sleeping, cheating. It starts small and quickly hour by hour, day by day, it escalates. The thing is, the kids and I have had too many holiday back to back. First, there was mid Autumn festival and the National holiday. They've lost focus. They're antsy, they need to be reinvested. I need to be reinvested.

I'm happy that my students like me, they really like me. In fact, two girls have a habit of running to my house and catching me in inopportune moments. Twice, when I was on my hands and knees in my underwear lint rolling my floor because I need to have a clean floor...... that's another story all together..and two other times when I was cooking, once when I was lying in bed... aaaaaawkward.

Overall, I'd say my students are great. They respect me and they really want to get to know me. I've been trying to get to know them better, too. They like to sing although many of them probably shouldn't. They really like playing basketball. They have a poor foundation of learning. They need to be taught every detail of learning: what to read, what to read, where to read, what to memorize, where to write. They don't know how to take tests. They like winning small petty competitions. They are in 7th grade but their ages range from 13  to 16, how old I was when I was in 8th - 11th grade. They like to dance. They like laughing at me when I dance. 

My kids have books full of music lyrics. I have no idea when they have time to write these since they have class from 7:20 am to 9:20 pm. My school is too poor for the arts so it's not like they have a music class. I've converted the fifth hour that I teach on Thursday to a miscellaneous cultural hour. This week, we learned the Cupid Shuffle. Next week, skits. The week after that, I am going to teach them an easy song.

I hope you've enjoyed the last 20 vacation posts about Laos and National holiday break. Unfortunately from now until mid January my posts are bound to be more mundane. No more major holidays you see. Back to the same old, same old. Happy Autumn! What should I be for Halloween?