Tales from the classroom 3

I started 'Tales from the classroom 2' by talking about how I had taught 200 kids during the semester, which I now realise is not all that many!

This semester was going to be different to last, not only would I be on more money and working with a new group of teachers but also, I would not be working at the same school as originally planned. I will admit at first I was really disappointed, I had expected to continue teaching my grade 3 kids, who would now be grade 4 of course but after spending so much time with my new batch of kids (about 500 in total, see 200 really is nothing!), I am now looking forward to working with them all again next semester.

So who were the characters this time? Who replaced Water/Nigel as my favourite student? What were the moments that brought a smile to my face (and hopefully as I tell the stories, yours too)? And of course, what funny names did I come across this time? Read on, and I will attempt to answer all these questions and maybe one or two more...

Lets start with the names, week one is always the most fun as you meet all the kids for the first time and some instantly become favourites, more often than not its simply their names that earn them a spot amongst your favourite students. In time, some remain likable whilst others actually turn out to be annoying little scamps!

Some of the best names I had on this occasion were Mountain and his friend U.F.O, a little lad called Tintin (though he had no quiff or a white dog, come to think of it!), though he was not to be the only 'famous' name I met, two others were Harry Potter and John Wang (Jackie Chan's character in Shanghai Noon, a kung fu western, the name being homage to John Wayne, in the film anyway). And a number of students called Yo-Yo, both male and female. I had a boy called Daniel2, not sure who he was named after. And there was a boy called Crab, a trendy little dude with cool hair!

What I did find interesting about this school, was the amount of children, fluent (or close to) in English. A lot of the kids had spent some of their childhood living in America or other English speaking countries, I had a boy from California called Tony, a girl from North Carolina called Sophia and a girl called Samantha from Hong Kong, to name just a few. The most impressive of all though was a girl called Victoria, who has visited America a few times to see her big sister, who lives there. During break time, Victoria and her friends would speak English opposed to Chinese, she told me she had taught them all and I don't doubt it! I once saw Victoria marking the English test papers for the Chinese English teacher! In one class, I was getting the kids to tell me something about Pandas, most went with "they are black and white" some of the better students went with "they eat bamboo", Victoria said "they are an endangered animal", she is definitely one of my most advanced students.

As well teaching Grade Threes (like last year), I also had a couple of Grade Two classes. The gap between the two grades was not that big, ability wise. But I found the younger kids to be even more responsive to English lessons. One girl, Flower took an instant shine to me and always had a big smile on her face during class, each week we would learn about a different vowel and I would play a game in which kids would suggest words featuring that week's vowel, each week she would suggest 'Iguana'. Obviously she did well when looking for the 'A, I and U' but she still suggested it on the weeks we focused on 'E and O'. It became something of a running joke in lessons thereafter and on the final day when we had a class photo, one of the kids suggested shouting "Iguana" (in place of "Cheese")!

Me with Flower, a girl obsessed with Iguanas!

There are certainly many characters at this school and by far the most intriguing is a young man named Tom. One of my first classes I spoke about spiders and he got up to tell everyone about the camel spider, explaining that they live in the desert but are not real spiders. The next lesson, I was talking about the desert, Tom stood up and told everyone about the camel spider again. The next class, I was talking about fruit, Tom got up to talk about how much he loves spiders, particularly the camel spider, once again reminding us all that the camel spider is not a spider at all. Tom was a constant distraction to his class mates, and quite often to me also. He would sit and talk to himself all lesson, not the only boy I have known to do this. But unlike the rest, he chose to talk to himself in English not Chinese. I actually didn't mind that so much, and would often leave him to it. One day he was really annoying my Teaching Assistant Cindy, and she was trying to pull him away from his desk, she dug a nail into his arm by accident. He pulled away and looked at it for a moment, then looked at her, "you hurt me" he said, before adding "I will hurt you".

Me with Tom, a boy obsessed with Camel Spiders!

Another character, mentioned above, was a boy called Harry Potter. At first, I thought he was a naughty boy who couldn't keep still or stop talking. Soon, I realised that he was an 8 year old Chinese version of me! He even had a similar haircut to mine at that age, not to mention glasses! I had a soft spot for him after that, and found by getting him involved in lessons, he would actually behave himself. Maybe, the extra attention was a mistake however, as one day he decided to stand up in middle of class and announce to me (in front of 40 class mates) "I love you teacher, and I want to marry you!" I haven't actually given him an answer, though I think he will probably have forgotten about it by now (I hope)... Harry often wanted to recite conversations with me from his English school books. "Do you use chopsticks in England?" he'd ask, then say "teacher, you say 'no, we use knife and forks, chopsticks are hard for English people' ok?", I wasn't going to argue so would speak the line I was given. Was I that annoying at 8?

Me with Harry Potter, a boy obsessed with me!

By far my favourite student was a Grade One girl called Amy. She would often run up to me before class, and say "Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel". One afternoon, after class I was on my way to get a bottle water from a local shop when Amy spotted me, she let go of her grandad's hand to chase me into the store, she wasn't coming over to say hello or give me a hug but to kick me, she found it hilarious as did her grandad! You might think now, why did I like her so much well... One class we were learning about the face and I had used a clown to demonstrate different coloured parts (red nose, blue mouth etc). She drew a picture of a clown for me and on the back she wrote "To Damryl, from Amy". Too cute.

Me with Amy, my favourite student