If you haven't read or heard anything about Willie, he is in my group of 3-4 year olds that I teach in the morning. He is so funny! He remembers words like it's nobody's business, and he has some difficulties paying attention and listening to directions. He speaks better English than any of my kindergarten level kids. I think the biggest reason he acts out a little in class is not necessarily that he has atttention issues, but that it's below his skill level! We are teaching all of the babies colors, flowers, butterfly, sun, cloud and songs that help them learn Engish words, when Willie can put every word we are teaching into a compound sentence. Haha, I feel so bad for him sometimes. If I was in that class, I'd be so bored! But he definitely makes it interesting for himself (and for us, too). When Willie finally is standing still and participating, he will say the exact opposite of what we are trying all the kids to say. We will say, "Look! Mina is wearing pink socks!" And Willie will say, "Mina is wearing blue socks!" If we say, "doggy-woof woof!", Willie will say, "cat! Meeyow!". Or one of our personal favorites, "Emily Elizabeth is a girl"- "Emily Elizabeth is a boy!". The best part is that no matter what song we are singing, he will yell, "JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY!" Kaitlyn and I just look at each other and laugh and the secretaries will go over and quiet him down (with kids that little, the secretaries hang out and tell the kids what to do if they won't understand it in English). In fact, one time one of the secretaries came over to Willie behind him, put her hand over his mouth and gave him a couple good shakes, saying, "Shut up, Willie, shut up!" She is such a sweet girl and Willie was just taking it so well that we couldn't help laughing, trying not to be obvious. One last thing about Willie, every day, he will take off his shoes and start climbing on the stacked nap time beds. Without fail. Haha oh, Willie. :)
Also in that group is Lillian. She is the sweetest little girl ever! She always wants to be in the front of the line so she can hug my legs while I wait for all the other kids to line up. Some of the other kids saw her do that and now I have to break up fist fights over my legs in the front of the line.
All of my little kids have washcloths in the pocket of their aprons, where they put tokens they earn for speaking correct English. Well one day, Aison (I love Aison!) folded his washcloth into a little cone and started putting his tokens in there. The entire rest of the day, he would yell out English and hold up his little washcloth for us to drop his tokens in. It was really funny. We went downstairs later that day and Aison came up to me, help up his vest, and said, "baby". Weirdly, I knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted me to roll up his vest and fold it so it looked like a baby. I did and he held it gently. Then he put it behind his back, tilted his stool off its back legs and quickly sat back against the wall, smashing his vest between the legs of his stool and the wall. Then he got up, handed me his unraveled vest and said, "baby!" Silly little Aison:)
Proud teaching moment!! The other day, a little white butterfly fluttered into the school. All of my babies and some of my older kindergarten kids were sitting and waiting to go home. I was talking to Gerald about some of my classes when I heard, "butterfly! Butterfly!" All of my little babies were using the new word they learned a few days before. I was so proud!!
I teach a pair or twins, Caleb and Gabriel. They are great! They wanted to do thumb wars with me, but they only knew the little thumb war chant in Chinese. They're not supposed to speak Chinese, so I taught them how to say, "one, two, three, four, I declare a thumb war". They beat me every time ;)
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| Gabriel (he has a little freckle on his nose) |
And we can't forget Wesley, my little Gangham styler, hopping into class every day! I have resolved to get a video of him before I leave!
To my older kids in AK (7-8 year olds), They are just super fun! They have enough English skills to understand me, but not quite enough to say what they are thinking in English. Some of their funny Chinglish terms are: "He is funny me!" (He is making fun of me!), "My know!" (I know!-they are getting a lot better at correcting each other with this), "Can I have a one..." (they put measure-type words in funny places), "a there and a there!" (My older KE kids do this too-when they don't know how to say something, they'll just say "there"). One of my kids, Ivan, is pretty proficient in English, but he's a little stinker sometimes! He steals the other kids tokens, but he's so good at looking cute and innocent, that it took me a little while to believe the other kids when they automatically accused him of taking their tokens. They all would have like 5 and he'd have 9 or 10. Oh, Ivan! haha. One more thing about this group, we have a CD of 46 songs, but they have started to outgrow them, so they like 3 3 of them and ask to sing them every day: 5 little monkeys swinging from a tree, Peanut butter, and Tudy ta. I have those three songs stuck in my head all day! I want to get some good pics of them, they are such a fun group.
I have many a story of my 6th graders, but nothing really tops my last story about them, so we'll leave the stories I do have for another time. Build suspense.
That's it for my noteworthy stories, for now! I found it really difficult as I was writing this to not give a bio of each one of my kids. I am so tempted to do it now, because I love them all so much, naughty or nice, rowdy or quiet, attentive or all over the place! Even though my kids will grow up and forget these stories, and very possible me altogether, I will never forget them! (And this just got weirdly sentimental... Cue the really cute Chinese New Year Pictures!!)
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THE END!
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