Yeah, so, first of all, the previous format for date labeling is probably going to have to stop. Like I said in my first post, as a kid I never found the motivation to regularly keep a diary, and clearly a decade and some later that hasn't changed much.
On a different note, yayy! Work has started! And it is insane. I'm teaching 8 unique classes right now, but some of those occur twice instead of once a week. During the first week I lost my voice almost completely because of not being used to talking non-stop for almost four hours (two classes) straight. (Who'd have guessed that I'd be bad at talking continuously, eh? That's probably the biggest shocker of the post.)
Here's what I've learned: kids are adorable; kids are monsters; kids are 100% crazy; and if I ever wanted to write a best-selling children's novel, I should probably just steal one of my kids' ideas and then write it way better. (I only realized as I was writing that that I just summarized the entire plot of Big Fat Liar, except instead of sympathizing with cute little Frankie Munez, apparently I'm Paul Giamatti. Oh god.)
But anyways, I teach a range of kids going from 5th through 9th grade, and it's hilarious and terrifying to see again in person what puberty does to a person. The 5th and 6th graders tend to be energetic to the point where I've had some behavior problems in class. Yesterday, some of my kids started throwing stuff to each other around the classroom, and they regularly scream over each other, or sing, or swear and make really, really bad yo mama jokes I haven't heard since the '90s. Not all of my 5th/6th kids are like this of course. One of my other classes is full of extremely bright kids and I spend a lot of my time wishing they would just sign up for all of my classes.
The 7th-9th grade kids, on the other hand, tend to be much quieter. A combination of slightly improved impulse control, a puberty-induced extreme fear of embarrassment, a teenage sense of apathy...who knows. They're much easier to manage, but also not as fun when you get the occasional class who seriously don't want to say anything.
The public mini-buses in the Causeway Bay area are covered with ads for various "education centers" promising to foster academic success, but ours are by far the most frequent.
We've also learned that the company has in the past paid much more expensive fees to put ads on the ding-dings, and those ads have included teachers' faces. Having one's face on a ding-ding has now become a life ambition for some of the new teachers.
A mock-up leftover from the time we did have a ding-ding ad.
To a certain extent, I think I identify with these kids' upbringing a lot more than some of the other teachers. The kids all come from incredibly privileged backgrounds and, to be honest, even though I already knew how privileged my own childhood was, the knowledge is brought home even more every time a kid says something about his/her elite life and I catch myself thinking "oh yeah, my family does that too." They talk about traveling to Europe, or vacationing in Thailand. When the teachers were discussing how insanely expensive the international schools these kids attend are, I agreed with them, but was forced to admit that my own international school back home had cost about the same.
Recently, I was teaching a 5th/6th grade class about the issues that face the elderly here in Hong Kong, and, knowing that these kids have NO awareness of poverty, I started off by asking them about their own grandparents. Were they retired? Did they have their own home? So they had saved money, huh? Do they have health problems?
One kid started saying that of course his grandparents have money--they always gave him money too. This led to a round of discussion, with one girl saying she got HK$900 for her 9th birthday, HK$1000 for her tenth. I noted that this was a pretty good incentive for living. Another boy chimed in, "My grandparents gave me HK$3000 for Chinese New Year!"(About USD$390.) In a different class, a boy informed me that he would be missing class later that month because his condo in Beijing would be finished and he was off to vacation there.
It was gratifying, though, to see their shock and dismay when we read about the living conditions that some of Hong Kong's elderly must endure. The dark side of HK that these kids are sheltered from is the terrible poverty that about 1/7th of HK's population faces. (Well, and the human rights abuses and exploitation of Filippina and Indonesian domestic helpers, but that's another story. Oh, and also the treatment of minorities in general...okay, it can be kind of a dark place underneath the glitz.) I hope that they learned something about the less privileged, at least. Maybe their curiosity will be sparked.
And now, for something (not) completely different.
Kids are crazy story time:
1) We give all prospective students who want to take a critical thinking discussion/debate course with us an assessment test where we ask them various logic questions. Recently, we got one back from a 17 year-old girl whose response to the question "Should companies offer gym memberships or fitness programs to their employees (to boost their productivity etc.)?" was:
"Yes, because if the female employees use the gym and become more physically appealing to male workers, the male hormones will push them to work harder to impress the beautiful ladies in the office. The workers would also try their best to finish their work on time so they can date after work. Higher efficiency can be achieved this way--what a bargain!"
Unsurprisingly, "What a bargain!" is the new catchphrase around work.
2) In fact, it came up recently in another situation. During the summer, class sizes fluctuate a lot as students come and go because of family vacations. One of my 5th/6th writing classes temporarily dropped last week from four giggling girls to one. It turns out that when girl number 4 is on her own, she is much, much stranger than she seemed in a classroom of her peers. We spent some time at the beginning chatting; I was trying to put her at her ease since it's obviously hard to be the only student in an interactive two hour class.
Eventually, she looks at me intensely for a moment and asks, "If I ask you a question, will you promise not to get mad?"
Well, no curious person can refuse that, so I told her I wouldn't get mad but that I might refuse to answer.
Hmm. She considered this. "When you were wearing that other thing that other time, how come you didn't close all your buttons?"
*Blush.* Did I forget? I wondered. Did I just leave more buttons undone than was work appropriate? I pointed to my current shirt and noted that unfortunately, there were no more buttons to button--they ended at what I considered a reasonable height but not all the way up to my neck.
"No, not that shirt. You know the one. YOU KNOW what it was. Don't you know you looked so silly?? All the girls were talking about it."
I had nothing to say to this. I tried to describe a couple of my work outfits that she might be referring to, but every time received only, "No, no! You KNOW the one."
"Jane (not real name), I honestly have no idea."
Her eyes widened dramatically. "Is it because you wanted to attract that male teacher who was with you when you sat in on this class?"
Whaaaaaat??? It's true I had sat in on her class back when another instructor was teaching it, but I saw so many classes the first few weeks; I couldn't recall sitting in with someone else. I figured though--and dialogue with her confirmed--that she was referring to the only male new teacher, who must have also been observing at the time.
"Do you want to kisssssss him??"
"Uh, NO. D and I are friends and he is awesome but no."
"Don't lie! YOU KNOW! You KNOW!! There was lightning in your eyes!!"
This was when I decided it was time for Jane to try some grammar exercises by herself so I could snickeringly write an email to the other teachers telling them about the insanity taking place. One teacher's response: "Good thing that lightning will drive up D's hormones and make him work harder." My response: "What a bargain!"
3) A later gem in the same class:
"You must be so rich."
"Not really, why would you think that?"
"Because this place is very expensive and it pays you so you must be so rich."
Admittedly, I could see how this might occur to someone. But I gently corrected her and said I was doing okay, but not rich rich.
At some point, she also asked:
"Why do you always fake laugh?"
Ah, the moment of non-insane insight. A question that has plagued me from various sources for many a year. Having no good reply at the ready, I resort to my go-to response--fake laugh.
Skip to when Jane starts planning out the story she'll write for homework:
"I'm going to make this President like you. She'll be 30 years old and really tall and have a large nose...but I'll make the eyes small because you have really big eyes. Oh, and she'll have a fake laugh."
"Jane...how old do you actually think I am?" Snicker.
She guesses down each year to 21 before I respond affirmatively. Her eyes widen. "21!! If you are only 21 now, you are going to be so rich!"
I tell her I appreciate this financial advice, and she instantly begins haggling how much of a cut she should get from my millions as a "fortuneteller" fee. She is swiftly denied anything above 1%. The clock ticks. Two hours are up.
Up Next: we switch back to stories of Hong Kong life...
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