Discipline

Well it happened, I had my first crying student today in class. I just wish it would have been one of the misbehaving ones and not my little one.

To backtrack- my school has no disciplinarian. None. The director and my supervisor are both so nice to all the students. It’s a business after all, so they want the students to return. So while other foreign teachers have the luxury of threatening to send their students to the Director, I have no such person. This week I’ve had to crack the whip (not literally, although they do hit middle school and high school-aged students in most schools.) Phones are being taken away, kids are sitting in corners, this foreign teacher is not taking any more shit. To clarify, I am using stickers and positive reinforcement as well for the little ones. This works most of the time.

Last week was the first day of a new “special kindergarten speaking class.” It’s a combined class of all the kindergarten sections. It was chaos to say the least. My youngest student was sitting there sweating because of how crazy the older boys were acting. I felt so bad for her and tried to calm her down. This week, I was more prepared. Multiple coloring and writing activities and to my amazement, they were wonderfully behaved. They were even behaving well enough for us to enjoy a friendly game of Bingo. Things were going well until I looked over and saw my poor little 5-yr old sobbing. She was being quiet, but she was definitely crying and repeatedly wiping the tears away from her eyes. I didn’t know what had happened! I walked over and knelt down trying to figure out what had happened. Unfortunately, she can barely tell me all the colors in English let alone explain to me why she was so upset. After hugging her and calming her down, the class finished out smoothly (looking forward to a wonderful call from her parents next week I’m sure.)

So, now it’s Friday night. Other teachers are meeting up at the bars ready for a night out, but not this gal. I teach at 10am tomorrow and spending all Friday with kindergarteners has me worn out. Is it wrong that I keep a bottle of wine and bottle opener at my computer desk and not in my kitchen? That’s what I thought.  Cheers!