My students

My Korean students are smart, warm, funny and a joy. My job is difficult but there's always something good going on in class. Although I might need to send them on various timeouts vis a vis my self-invented "X-Box," they're pretty much well behaved. Of course there are few evil kids, the kind where you want them to be sick every day, but for the most part, I am pretty happy with my little munchkins.

X-Box is a small box I draw in the corner of the white board. If a student gets three "x", then he/she will have to stand facing the whiteboard or wall or not play a game that day. I make them stand for five minutes. Sometimes they cry. Sometimes they act defiant. But they really hate being singled out from the group unless it's a couple of the evil kids who someone how revel in this experience. I'm sure one of them will become a serial killer. During lunch which I help administer every day at 12:20pm, one of the evil students named "Jake," likes to talk to his chop sticks. His eyes almost cross from the intensity of the conversation between him and his plastic practice chop sticks:

"We will take over this class, and kill the teachers. We will then tear down all the paintings we did and set fire to them in the middle of the carpet. Yes, we will do this..."

In that same class, we have Hank. Hank is the kind of kid who will act passive aggressively. He will start crying and tell the teacher how Mary has violated his lunch tray or hit him while he is actually punching the kid back who supposedly hurt him! Or he will hit the kid and then tell the teacher how bad that kid has been to him. He will also yell "no" when you try to help him with his jacket. AAAhh! I let the other teacher handle Hank.

Besides the evil kids, there is one six year old student named May who say in perfect, cute English to me: "Mr. Palmer? Time for X-box?" I always reply to her, "maybe."

Another favorite I have is a student named Anna. She's always beating up Scott in a playful way. In the middle of Scott's beating right before class, she will walk up to me and tell me in really good English about her day or who is absent, etc. During class time, she will ask questions or answer all the questions on the activity sheets, etc. She is really smart.

I like Judy who insists on calling me "Hello, baby monster." She loves that and never tires of making fun of my Korean words which I say sometimes. Especially "chun chun-e" whenever they hurriedly go from class to the awaiting diesel smoking buses.

I have a student named after a Korean bicycle who draws pictures on the white board of Scott and his imaginery chicken-looking girl friend. Scott sits there fuming until the drawing is complete and runs after him yelling only to get his butt kicked by a Korean boy with a Korean bicycle name. This is all play fighting which the school discourages of course but they're kids and that's what they do. Of course I don't allow standing on chairs or anything to get out of hand. Unless it was the time that Dio (see another post about report cards) got kicked by a couple of girl students during a game called "robot dance." I didn't see it but his mom called later to complain. Dio is a cry baby for sure but I feel bad that the girl students were treating him badly. He's the kind of kid who needs help walking down stairs. Really.

Jack is one of the sweetest kids in my 7 year old class. He is the tallest and has a couple of years of tae kwon do. So, him and Drew and Mark (who must weigh 100 pounds) will have play fights on the carpet with Jack usually winning. I have them play "King of the Hill" and when the girls get involved, the game usually dissolves very quickly. He doesn't like to play with girls.

Then there's Roy who is about five. He is very advanced and has a great sense of humor. I can talk to him in different English tenses like future present. How about that!