Something you have to understand about Taiwan children, is that they are raised in a Confucian society. I still don't really know what this means, but it results in students who (mostly) respect the teacher, and who don't seem to pull a fraction of the crazy stuff that I pulled when I was in school.
The worst I have encountered in my first month of teaching is a small group of 12-13 year-old boys who give me attitude, and who, understandably, are less than enthused about participating in a 2-hour English class at 6:30pm. This is by far my least favourite class, but still, it's not like they throw spitballs or anything (Have I said too much?).
My favourite class, of 8-ish year-olds, has a rambunctious, loud boy who somehow hurts someone nearly every day. He is not a bully, nor is he mean-spirited. He just doesn't think before he acts. Or before he speaks. So, I pull him aside and make him apologize to his injured friend and tell them he won't do XYZ again. I'm also telling him not to yell in class, oh, about every 20 minutes or more. It kind of drives me insane.
Then, there are moments like I had this past Thursday. We had Science class, and the students were begrudgingly writing about magnets in their workbooks, when somebody randomly started singing "You Are My Sunshine". Then, more of them joined in, and when I told them I absolutely love that song, the entire class started the song over and serenaded me with what I think is one of the sweetest songs out there. My heart grew three sizes that day…
I also have laughing-out-loud moments when I mark their quizzes and tests. Spelling word number 8 was supposed to be "listen to stories" and one student misspelled both "listen" and "stories". Actually, I only now realized that I only corrected "listen", because I was too busy laughing about the resulting error.
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Much love, Britt