The Joys of Teaching

Throughout the day, I teach different ages of kids at different levels. And sometimes when your day is just not going right, you can always count on them for a smile.

I was teaching kinder one day while not feeling well and the kids were just not listening or paying attention. So the day wasn't going as planned. And then I look down at one little boy who is mimicking everything I generally say or do with them. He even had my tone down! "Who's speaking Korean?" And then the next little boy does the same thing. Soon, the whole class began to imitate the teacher. They certainly made me forget about my cold!

In my afternoon class of 11 year olds, every Friday I was doing a snack day with them, providing that they were good that week. Then I had an increase of kids in the class and so I told them that it was now too expensive and that I had no money to buy them snacks. I arrive to class one Monay afternoon and one boy asked me if I had any money. I couldn't figure out where he was going with this, so with a puzzled look on my face I asked him why. "Because on Friday I was at EMart and I saw you. Why do you go to EMart if you have no money?" I cracked! Sorry kids, for not spending my grocery money on your snacks!!

It is hard to get my academy kids, aged 16, to talk in class. And so as an ice breaker, whenever they would answer a posing question, I would make the sounds of a buzzer. "Ding ding ding" for a correct answer and a very loud "Arrrrrrg" for a wrong answer. One day, they were very anxious to answer questions and to hear my buzzer sounds. To me, they seemed a little over anxious and so I asked them why. One boy wanted to record my "Arrrgg" and put post it on the internet! And so I confiscated his cell phone until the end of class. Definetly a "Michael thing" to do.