Ms. Sharon vs. The Kids: Round 2

On Wednesday evening I learned that the teacher they had offered the position to had turned down the job and they wanted me to stay for another week. I agreed out of guilt and a sense of obligation to do the right thing and then spent the evening in a black cloud grumbling about how I didn't like kids in groups and wasn't a teacher and had so much else to do instead of being stuck in a classroom and I had a bad foot and shouldn't be on it all day, grumble, moan, self-pity, grumble. Poor Steven had to listen to me all night.

When I woke up the next day, I hadn't quite shaken the cloud, but I dragged myself out of bed and out to the sidewalk to catch a xe om to school.

My initial plans for the second day included reviewing the rules and handing out more "getting to know you" worksheets. The first one was "Things I did Last Summer" and the other was "This School Year" where students could put what they wanted to learn, their favorite subject, etc. The rule review went well and afterwards I introduced my "Classroom Super Star" poster, which got a lot of attention.

After the worksheets, I decided to get them out of their seats and explained a vocabulary building game I had found on line the day before. I had seven vocabulary words from the social studies lesson the day before written out in two syllables, one syllable on a different piece of paper, totaling 14 pieces of paper. I taped a piece of paper on each student's back and kept on for myself. I then explained that they couldn't look at their own back's, so would have to put the words together using the word parts on other students' backs.

The kids ran around looking at each other's backs for a minute or two, but weren't quite sure how to put it together, so I jumped in with a hint. "I have "C-U-L" on my piece of paper. What word did we learn yesterday that starts with C-U-L?" Silence. "How about CULTURE? Who has T-U-R-E on their back?" Once we found the first pair, they caught on and it was more fun. Unfortunately, with only 13 kids, it lasted about 10 minutes.

After the word game, I gave them all word puzzles to do at varying levels of difficulty. I had three, the first being the easiest and so on. I asked them to quietly raise their hands when they were ready for the next one. Fifteen minutes later, they had completed all three and I still had 35 minutes left in the language arts portion of the class. I decided to sit them down and read a few books, which got us to the end of the hour.

Next I introduced the math lesson. I asked them to think of all the ways they would use math when they were grown up and on their own. We came up with a list including counting money, shopping, weighing things, travelling, etc. I then had them make Math Posters, asking them to draw whatever they thought of when they thought of math. After a little more explanation, they went to work.

While they were making their math posters, I googled an easy Sudoku puzzle on line and ran off 13 copies (I am all about the fun worksheets). When I returned to the class, I noticed that the lines on the puzzles had not come out on the copies, so for the next 10 minutes, I had the kids drawing the lines in the puzzles until it was time to go to Computer class.

While the kids were in their computer class, I tried to do the Sudoku and found it almost impossible. I decided to scrap the whole thing and find an easier puzzle. I just hoped the kids didn't ask where their puzzles went and why they had wasted 10 minutes drawing lines.

After lunch, it was time for Social Studies. I was introducing the "Eight Strands of Social Studies: Culture, Economics, Government, Geography, etc.," and defining each strand, when I caught myself on "Government" saying, "In the United States we have a Democratic Government and in Vietnam you have a Comm....." (mental dialogue, "Oh Damn. I am in Vietnam! Crap! What am I getting myself into?) "...unist government." Followed by the inevitable, "Ms. Sharon, what is a commernist governemnt?" "Um, well, er, eh..a Communist Government is one where the government has a lot of power to take care of the people." "Oh." Whew.

We then went over communities and the definition of a community. We talked about what things you find in a community and I assigned the homework, to read the first few pages of Chapter One in their book on the community of San Antonio, Texas (using US Text Books in Vietnam is a little surreal) and make a ven diagram of HCMC and San Antonio listing the similarities and differences in each community. They used up half an hour just copying the list and the homework off the board. (Note to self: copying things off the board takes up lots of time.)

Finally it was time for Vietnamese and I was able to pat myself on the back for another day without any real drama. I even came out with a card from two of my female students that read: "Dear Ms. Sharon. Welcome to AIS School. We all love you. You are very kind. We are very happy that you are our teacher. You are good teacher. You are so creative and smart. Your birthday is we birthday. You know. You are very nice."

Maybe kids aren't so bad after all.