Entry 28: 4th Graders

As I walk into the classroom, their face light up. Little did I know the reasons as to why they seemed so happy. I think as the months have passed, I understand why they like it when I come. The first reason is an obvious one, I bring the candy (not all the time, but often enough for them to pay attention and not enough to make them think it is a daily thing), but the second one somewhat backfired on me, I'm their friend.

I guess the reason why I say that this backfired on me because I started to lose respect with a few of the students, usually the male students. I play soccer the the kids before class and we have a grand Ole time. I joke and just mess around with the kids. My 1st graders find this as the most amusing thing ever, as they scream "Jeremy TEACHER 우리 팀!!! (our team!!!)" and even the 2nd graders laugh and giggle as I play keep away with the undersized soccer ball. With the older kids, they play much more competitively and they also like to play, but with a bit more seriousness. I become a teammate to them.

These kids come into class and they start to get away with the little things; not repeating what I say, not learning the new vocabulary, not participating in games, trying to play jokes on my during class, etc. (side note, these are 3 boys in the entire school, the rest of the kids are angels, seriously I am confused as to why they are so well behaved). 1 boy is my 4th grade class and 2 of them are in the 6th grade class.

I was trying to teach the class how to speak when talking on the telephone. The 1 boy, Sky, came up behind me as I was writing something on the board, and gave me a 똥찜 (literally translated poop needle). I turned around, laughed it off and just told him to sit down. I continued with my lecture. He did it again. The class roared with laughter. I turned on my "scary face" and told him to sit in the back off the room facing the wall. I felt bad after about 5 minutes, asked him a vocabulary question, and when he got it correct I let him rejoin the class. In 2 min, he gets up out of his seat and starts talking to one of the kids in the back of the room who saw me starring them both down and told Sky "SHUT UP!". I was getting pretty annoyed. I put him again in time out, and after about 5 min, I let him join the class. I prepared to play a game with the class based on the vocabulary, and Sky decided that it would be much more beneficial if he took out his comic books to read. The whole class was like "Teacher? are you going to hit him?", I just gave him the scariest look that I could muster up, and no one in the class dared to laugh. You could have heard a pin drop. I told everyone that we were no longer going to play. That we were no longer going to be receiving candy. Thankfully, the class understood my frustration. I gave them a little speech (in Korean btw) how I wanted to have fun in this class, but there was going to be no way that we could have fun if people were not going to participate. I wasn't angry at them, but they knew that I was frustrated.

The following school day, their teacher came to me and formally apologized for their behavior. She heard about the 똥찜's and was pretty embarrassed that it happened in her class. I told her that it wasn't that big of a deal, and that they are just kids. Thankfully, after that little lecture I gave to those kids, things went back to normal. The next time I saw the class, they did amazingly. We played games, had fun, laughed a bunch, and I had a huge smile on my face as I left the room.

When I become a dad, I know that I am going to hate getting mad at my kids, but I know for sure that I'm not going to be afraid to discipline them. I know for a fact, that I hate getting frustrated with my students for misbehavior (frustration over their English is a whole different story), but I discipline them when its necessary because I know that they will take it to heart and improve.

I like my 4th grade class. They are a lot of fun. They are really good students and they have lots of spunk.