mike school

I started working at my school on Tuesday. I haven’t begun teaching but I’ve been in my share of classrooms already. Because I am new to the school, and new to teaching all together, I sit in on classes and observe how the teachers set up the curriculum and hold it down. When I walk into a small classroom with as little as 12 kids in it, it’s hard to go unnoticed. Usually when I walk in I can catch a few different expressions on their faces. Some look puzzled, some look shocked, and some look at me with a giggle. The class then begins with an introduction along the lines of “class, this is teacher Mike, everybody say hi to teacher Mike.” Once the uncomfortable forced interaction is over the lesson begins. Usually the kids just ignore me, but there’s always one in every class…
Jim is a short, pudgy-cheeked, pot bellied 11 year-old boy. A jolly little hypo, whose parents probably put him in an ESL school just to get away from him longer. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim in a class I sat in on Wednesday afternoon. As soon as I walked in I knew he was that kid. Yelling out “teachuh!!” shouting out answers, moving around and spazzing about was how Jim spent the first hour of class time. Then came the 10 minute break between hours 1 and 2. As I’m sitting in my uncomfortable little wooden desk seat, I see a chubby smile on the face of Jim, who was waddling towards my desk. He begins our interaction with hard laughter, followed abruptly by a pinch in the leg. After which he decides to grab my arm, looking closely while laughing, and pulling the hairs that grow from it. After calling the attention of his classmates, the pudgy little punk says something in Chinese while pointing to my arm and begins laughing. Jim turns to me with a big grin and said, “you have long hair arms!” Again following through with more laughter. Scanning upward Jim gets to my head and starts to grab my short hair, again announcing to everyone that it too was different from theirs. “you have short hair!!!” was the next observation. He then told me I had a big nose, which he later pointed out a second time during class. “Teacher Mike has a bigger nose!!” They were learning comparatives (big, bigger, small, smaller, etc.) THEN the time came when they had to pair up and work together. I had an empty seat next to me, which was quickly occupied by none other than my boy Jim. Not concentrating on what he was learning in class, the little oinker decided it would be in his best interest to pat me on the back repeatedly. After a few minutes of hard patting and a chubby smile staring back at me, I had to put an end to Jim’s kind gesture of making sure I wasn’t choking. “it hurt?” he asked. “no.” I said. “just don’t.” I said with a smile. Once the group session was over Jim headed back to his seat, where he spent the remainder of class being the meatball that he is.
The rest of kids were pretty good, one asked me how tall I was and one was astounded that I had blue eyes, but none of them could match what Jim brought to the table. Fat little Jim was annoying but I gotta admit, he made my day interesting,I don’t think I’ve never been made fun of so badly, let alone by a 5th grader. I can’t wait to have a Jim in my own class.