小朋友and why they trip me out

the literal translation of "kids" in chinese (小朋友) is "small friends," which is hilarious, as is listening to myself address a huge group of students as "little friends." kids 10 and under, while they come with their own sets of frustrations, also come with the guarantee of being constantly entertained, and here are some reasons.

1. kids are obsessed with pens and pencils. everyday when my kids file into my classroom they are toting 20394823049324823948 different colors of pens, about 47 varities of pencils, and 29 pencil sharpeners. they will then proceed to spend 17 hours writing their homework books because they want to write each letter a different color, or deliberatley bear down too hard so their lead will break and they can pull out a sharpener and go at it right there in the classroom. this one kid in my grade 1 class even has a stuffed hippo which can open up into a pencil case that i ended up having to ban from classroom premises because, in addition to pencil case/stuffed animal, it was doubling as a weapon. i don't even want to count the number of hours i spend after school each day sweeping pencil shavings off the floor because even if the pencil is sharp enough to carve ivory, in their minds, it can always be sharper.

2. kids are obsessed with touching the teacher. in addition to sweeping pencil sharpener contents off the floor, i spend a good bit of time peeling children off me. yesterday, this child came out of nowhere, charged at me like a bull, latched on like a leech, and then started shouting "KATIE老師好香(teacher katie smells good)!!!!!" he followed me around for the rest of the day, smelling me, and announcing to anyone who would listen that katie老師好香. today, we were sitting on the floor for reading circle, and i kept noticing the kid beside me stretching out his feet at a weird angle. for a really long time i couldn't figure out what on earth he was doing, i just thought he had a cramp or something. i finally figured it out when i saw him tap the kid next to him and comment on how the sizes of our feet compared, and that even though he was only 8, his feet were almost as big as mine.

3. kids like when the teacher is as crazy as they are. today i was giving a spelling test, and it was deadly silent as they were writing. suddenly, the image of myself in 6th grade english class appeared in my mind. in this image, i am reciting a tennyson poem that we read: "cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right of me..." anyway, that led to an episode of little rascals replaying in my head, the one where alfalfa is reciting the poem to his class, but someone has snuck a bunch of firecrackers into his pocket, and when he starts talking about cannons, they start going off. by the time all these images have cycled through my head, i realised that i was laughing out loud (quite hysterically). i looked at my students, all confused and giving me their standard "whatttttt is going on" blank stares. after i had stopped laughing, one student raised his hand. "老師, you are crazy. it is very good." i'm glad they can appreciate it.

4. they draw things like this: