My kids. I love my kids. They are the cement that is begrudgingly keeping my feet glued down. Despite the fact that I am clueless when it comes to teaching, that the first day I made a girl cry because I put her in the corner (protocol for misbehavior), and that each day I am reminded of my inadequacies, the kids love me and I love them back.
Of course, I have my favorites, but the majority will use any chance or excuse they can get to inch as close to me as possible, to touch my clothes, to put their hand on my knee, to look longingly into my face, to get out of their chairs while I am at the board so that when I turn around I have three kids just standing next to me. They love being close to me. I love that they love it. When I read to them, they crawl over each other to try to sit on my lap and by the end up the story, two of them have their chins resting on my shoulder and two more have their hands lightly resting on my knees. It sounds odd, I know, but they are comforted by me, I think, and it boosts me up and makes me feel like I could have some real influence on them. Then, of course, they act like the five year olds they are and I get frustrated. I now have 20 of them. One doesn’t know her ABC s and about 6 are fluent in English. I’ve catered to people’s needs my whole life but this is completely different! I am “Teacher Becca” to them and no matter what I do, what I threaten or bribe them with, they will always, always, shout my name out while raising their hands, just to show me that they’ve finished the first math problem. I can’t count how many times I say “That looks wonderful, now do the next one” in one day.
Every day one of them will inevitably have some sort of emotional episode that either makes me laugh or fear for their life. A few days ago, a kid drank all of the ink out of his pen. The other day, a girl got squished so hard between the desks that she couldn’t call out to me for help. One of my favorites, Stephen, a chubby boy with a round face and pale skin, cried because his friend promised him that he would tell him a story, and then broke the promise. They are adorable! I can’t help myself, I could tell you about them all day long.
The other day, Chester, the student who drank his pen, called out to me, “Hey Sexy Lady”, which then got repeated by his friend. I don’t think I have ever seen myself get so angry. It took my all my strength to not walk out on these children and I swore up and down that if I ever see Chester’s parents I would punch them. The disgusting, hellish culture of Pattaya seeps in to these children’s minds, and I am reminded of that as I tell them each day to keep their hands to themselves, to not call people that, to look at the girls in the eyes, to keep their clothes on, things that I can’t decide are part of this hyper-sexualized culture or simply part of being young. I don’t want to analyze it because it makes my brain turn dark when I do.
No comments:
Post a Comment