the trials of a school teacher

Seoul from atop a mountain...the number of apartment buildings never ceases to amaze me, nor the gorgeous mountains that border them. This is what I do to relieve the stress that being a teacher can sometimes cause...I hike and I look at things from this perspective.

Sitting here, wrapped in a blanket staring at my computer screen I feel compelled to write a little bit about my rantings over the phone to my mum yesterday. She was asking me about school and how my kids are doing. Which spawned this huge rant about various children in my classes that get to me, for different reasons.


The first child in my kindergarten class is quite possibly the most emotional child I have ever encountered in my life. He cries on a daily basis sometimes before the bell chimes and I'm even in the classroom! He cries when he is not the finished his work first, he cries when he is slow at answering a question, he cries when another child looks at him the wrong way, he cries during play time, he cries during class time, he basically cries at the drop of a dime! My first instinct when I started teaching was to baby him. I learned quickly that this was not the way to handle the situation. So I've started ignoring him when he cries instead. I make him turn his chair around and stare out the window until he is finished and wants to come back and join the class. I'm aware he is doing this for attention, from me and the other students, and I refuse to give attention to someone who cries because they are not the BEST at everything. The competitive drive in him is unprecedented! He literally broke out in a sweat during an activity the other day because he was working so hard and fast to be the first one finished. He runs to the front of the line. He pushes other kids. He states what page he is on when I hand out a booklet to colour as if to say "ha ha everyone I'm better because I'm faster". It drives me nuts! It is profound in my one kindergarten boy but I'm noticing it throughout this culture. The competitive nature is everywhere, english schools, elementary schools, high schools, universities and the job market. And while this is normal in any culture, the presence of it so strongly in such a young age group is frustrating. I just want to scream "You're 6!!! Sit back and have fun!! Stop competing because you'll be doing it for the rest of your life anyway". Anyway I'm learning measures to get around his sensitivity and competitive nature but it's an uphill battle that's for sure.


My other student is in my post-kindergarten classroom. This is a class of five 8 year olds and one 7 year old who is a year younger than his peers. And yet my problem doesn't lie with the youngest. It is in one of my 8 year olds who I truly believe has an attention disorder. He has the shortest attention span of anyone I've ever met. At first I thought he was a typical boy his age who didn't enjoy school and slacked off for the hell of it. Now it's clear to me this is not the situation at all. If anything is in his hands or on his desk he will play with it. If there is nothing on his desk he will resort to playing with his hands or his shoes. Anything to keep him from the current work in front of him. I've taken measures since I've been teaching him to prevent his distractions and yet he still cannot concentrate. I take his pencil case, pencils and eraser away from him. I've made him take off his shoes when those become the object of his attention. He sits at the front of the classroom by himself directly in front of me. I noticed how bad it was the other day when we took up a small exercise. The kids had to fill in the blanks for 8 questions. I knew they would have trouble spelling the words so after taking up each word, I spelled out each word 3 or 4 times making sure they were spelling them correctly. Afterwards I made each student come to my desk so I could mark their work individually. This boy came up with his book and had 6 of 8 fill-in-the-banks completed!!! He had tuned out during two of the answers and could not think of them himself. I was so frustrated! When we read aloud and I ask him to read next he is often on the wrong page or has no idea where we are if he is on the right page. Another characteristic of his that displays his attention problem is when copying a word on a previous page to the current one. He cannot remember the letters or order of letters in a word and flips back continuously. He needs the word directly in front of him on a separate piece of paper before he writes it properly. He frustrates me beyond belief. I feel like I don't get to spend enough time with the other students because this boy requires so much of my energy and focus because he is constantly wandering off into his own world. He needs my constant attention to keep him up to speed with the other kids. Some days I wonder if it's worth all the frustration and stress. I know I can't save all the kids I teach and some are lost causes but I don't think that I can do that. I can't give up on this kid just because he can't focus for more than one minute at a time. And I doubt that attention disorders are even mentioned in this culture. Most parents do not want to believe anything is wrong with their children. They will go so far as to deny visible apparent problems to ensure normality and superficial pride. Our school has an obviously astistic boy (not in my class PHEW) who spends his days silently kicking, fighting other students or the teacher. Or he's sitting silently under a table/chair or in a corner in his own world. And yet he is enrolled in a regular school. I'm not even sure there are resources available for a child like him in this country. Most of the homeless here are just people with mental disorders or who are disable and are abandoned by their families due to shame or lack of resources. It's a sad thing to see. I don't want any of my kids to fall through the cracks like that. I want to give them all the tools necessary to suceed but it's hard some days. Really hard.


Anyway these are some of the things I'm dealing with in my school on a day to day basis. And that's just how I approach this job, day to day. You just never know.


However I am sick and getting a cold and my kindergartens have been angels for me. I think they understand when I tell him I'm sick and I need them to be good. They've been making me laugh and we've been playing together a lot more. There has been less yelling, less screaming, less pandemonium in general. And I know it won't last but I'm appreciating it today because they were sweet kids today.