ooOOooo!

I need to explain this graph. I think it (along with the majority of this blog) may only be amusing to myself.

First, Jolin. Jolin is the Christina Aguilera of Taiwan. She’s here. In Taichung. Right now. They’ve been setting up her stage and the accompanying nightmarket in the park across the street from our school for the past couple days. On Friday night, someone was playing, and the kids thought it was Jolin and got up in the middle of class to look out the window. It wasn’t Jolin--it was someone else--but she’s playing tonight (Saturday). My apartment, several blocks away, is shaking with the bass. Needless to say, the bass was also distracting during class on Friday night.

Pet mice. One of my students brought a mouse to class this week (in a cage of course). I’m assuming it was homework or something, because why would you bring your pet mouse to school? She took it out of the cage during break but I made her put it back, for fear it would fall and crawl into the hole in the wall or get hurt in some way. I see enough injured, stray dogs wandering around the streets. I don’t need a mouse to die in my classroom. The mouse was only occasionally distracting during class, but it still makes my list!

4-second earthquakes. A few weeks ago, there was a four-second earthquake during class on Friday night. I didn’t feel it (that’s the second time I haven’t felt an earthquake here). I turned to get some papers off my table, and when I turned back, all my students exclaimed, “Did you feel that?!” Apparently the room had shaken, and I didn’t even realize it. We had a short discussion about how easy it would be to escape, since we were on the second floor (most students are on the eighth).

Building a snowman. Yeah, this is from my HB class. They’re insane and are always looking for my every weakness. Their book teaches “make a snowman” and “build a sandcastle.” Accordingly, the kids assume you can’t use switch the verbs around. Once, I referred to building a snowman, and the kids freaked out. Another time I referred to “going to the movies” instead of “seeing a movie.” Another freak-out session ensued.

The same thing happens in other classes when I don’t write letters “correctly.” Kids learn a specific stroke order and way of writing letters. I did too. My second-grade teacher was hard-core about how to write “Q” and “Z” too. But, unlike writing Chinese characters, there is a lot of leeway with letter-writing as you get older. There’s room for creativity and flair. Not so, according to my kids! My handwriting has changed a lot since Day 1 of teaching. I’ve gotten yelled at so many times by my students for writing my letters incorrectly, I’ve just given up and started writing like I’m in second grade again. Sometimes it’s painful. I’m sorry, but z’s look stupid without a line through the center of them. And q’s look stupid as backwards p’s. They need some pizzazz. But anyway, these arguments are way up there on the list of what distracts my students most, but not as high as…

PENCIL BAGS.

Lord have mercy, I hate pencil bags. When kids aren’t fiddling through them to find erasers, pens, pencils, or white-out, they’re storing or counting reward cards in them or (most commonly) dropping them, spewing six aisles of Office Max all over the floor. And of course, these episodes seemingly take hours to clean up and require more than one student to accomplish.

I read on an ESL website about a teacher who hates pencil bags so much, he/she doesn’t allow them to be on kids’ desks. Kids are supposed to start class with everything they need out on their desk, so they don’t have to go fumbling through their bags constantly. I like this solution, but I think setting this up in each of my classes would take up a lot of precious cram school time (I know what you’re thinking: “More than the time pencil bags already waste?” I don’t know). But mainly, the kids would be REALLY upset, as there is a cord binding child to pencil bag that is much, much stronger than that which binds mother to child. And I’m so tired after arguing with kids about how to write the letter ‘y’ that I just don’t have the energy for that. So, I think about the Tao, and I just accept it and move on. And by move on, I mean complain about it on my blog. :) I'm a terrible Taoist.