Priceless Classroom Moments

I thought I would write a quick blog of my favorite classroom moments so far.

I teach a group of three older girls who have little experience with English but they are very eager to learn and are always asking me questions to improve their vocabulary. They draw pictures on the board and I try to figure out what they are talking about and give them the English word. On one occasion, a girl drew a picture of a stick picture of a person which seemed innocent enough, and then she drew three bubbles coming out of the stick person's back side. She asked me, "Teacher, stomach, (made an sick looking face and pointed at the bubbles), What is this?" I tried to contain my laughter but couldn't. I ended up turning bright red and told her it was called passing gas. I felt like I kind of cheated them by not teaching them "fart" but I didn't want them to go home and tell their parents that is what they had learned in English school that day.



On the other end of the spectrum is my 5 year olds who have been in English school for 2 years and have a pretty great grasp on the language. We teach them from the same books that first graders in America would use. These kids can create sentences and describe the word they are looking for. We had just finished reading "Little Red Hen" and I told them they needed to draw a picture of an animal and write me a story about it. This super cute and smart boy was like, "Teacher what is a pig with horns on his face called?" I told him it was a boar. He then was like, "If my car is hungry, what do I feed it?" as he was patting his stomach. I was confused by this at first but the rest of the kid's assured me this is what he wanted to know. I told him, "You feed your car gas." Then he wanted to know, "Where you feed your car gas?" I told him at the gas station. He wrote this awesome story about a boar who worked at the gas station and how much fun he had it his job. I love this kid. Today, he came to school with his hair permed. I told him I liked his hair and he told me, "I went to the barber and he just made it curly." He cracks me up!


This has story has got to be my all time favorite so far. I was teaching a class of 8 year olds about nationalities. I told them that they are Korean and asked them what my nationality is. One kid told me I was American (good answer, kid) and one kid slipped and told me I was from Africa. I started laughing and told him, Africa are you sure? The smartest kid in the class piped up and was like, "Teacher, you can't be from Africa, you don't have enough melanin in your skin." I wasn't sure I heard him correctly so I made him repeat it and sure enough that is what he had said. I was amazed that he not only used the word correctly but in that context. Some days, I am just utterly amazed.

I'm sure I'll have many more to share with you over the next 11 months. I'll try to take pictures of my students soon and post them.