My kids!

Storytime. The kids in these first two pictures are no longer my students since we changed classes around last week for the new semester. Except Elly, the only girl, who changed her class time so she could still be in my class! aww Some of those boys were little terrors, especially Tom (the one in the front with blonde highlights), but I'm going to miss that class. What am I talking about? I still see them in the hall everyday, and that is plenty for me. Note: we had two Kevins, Kevin 1 and Kevin 2. That was fun. Especially the day when everyone else decided they wanted to change their names to Kevin 3, 4, 5 and so on.







Take a look at this next class. I still teach them everyday. It wins the prize for the strangest dynamic. There are three boys - Peter, Sean, and John - who are bouncing off the walls, and one very strange girl named Sara. Lately, she has begun lightly cupping my hair when I walk into class and saying "shake hands teacher." During her daily routine today, she added "hello hair. nice to meet you." errrr how can I get that to stop? Innocent, but slightly creepy.






This is a picture of my big class which I don't have anymore, thank goodness. I really loved the majority of them, but 12 kids is just too big. That may sound wimpy to any real teachers reading this, but you have to consider the language barrier we're dealing with here. And try competing with the beginning stages of flirting and with cell phones (the school doesn't have a policy against them since most of the kids have a Korean-English dictionary on it). Needless to say, I spent a good 1/2 of the class telling them to listen or taking away their dollars. Despite that, we still got along. Oh yeah, and we had a James 1 and James 2, a Eric 1 and Eric 2, and Ann, Anne, and Anna. But we also had some striking originals: Matilda and Esther.




This is my advanced class. Ironically, they also speak more Korean than any of my other classes. I guess they are just at that age (5th and 6th grade) where they are starting to think for themselves and are choosing to be rebellious. Lina is the one in the middle. She is so chubby, talkative and cute, but today she got mad and said the one bad Korean word I know. It sounds like "see ball." When I heard that come out of her mouth, I immediately called her out, which shocked everyone since they assume I have no idea what they say in Korean. I guess that proves that I am as curious to know Korean swear words as they are to learn English ones.




This is my favorite and final class. It usually has three students - Tim, Anna, and Alice - but Alice was absent on the day we took these pictures. They are just all so cool and funny and sweet. On most days, we spend half of the class laughing really hard at something one of them does or says. One day they all decided to convince me that it was "gum day" so I would let them chew the gum they had just stuck in their mouths before the bell rang. They even gave me a piece to help their case. On the same day the next week, they said it was gum day again, and that it was a weekly holiday. Now, they remind me the day before that it is "gum day eve," which I thought was pretty clever. They have also clung on to the word "commemoration." Anytime they are trying to talk me into playing a game, they inform me that it's so-and-so commemoration day. Fill that in with anything and everything you can think of, so that everyday is a commemoration for at least 3 different things. Too cute. Oh yes, I don't remember the context, but a few days ago, I taught them the meaning and dance behind "shake it like a polaroid picture." I couldn't have done that with any other class.