| Monday, July 11, 2005 |
| the obligatory work update |
work officially started a week ago and it's been goot times but very much draining. The grade 3&4 kids, of whom i'm responsible, are the perfect bunch. Any younger and you have to really talk down to them and raise your voice up a few pitches to hit "motherese" and any older, they're sucking their teeth at you after everything u say. A week into camp and there hasn't been any accidents worth recording in the accident log or any real incidents that we as teachers have to worry about. What's been really fun for me to watch is how kids resolve conflicts. In this past week, I've noticed that conflicts are usually escalated when there is a visible guardian or teacher present in the room where the conflict takes place.
Jeremy is kicking a soccer ball when out of nowhere, Thomas jumps in, grabs the ball and runs away. Before saying anything to Thomas, Jeremy looks around, spots me a few feet away and yells at me: "daaaarrereennnnn! Thomas stole my ball!" and then proceeds to cry until i fetch the ball and visibly discipline thomas for theifing. Now if i wasn't there, Jeremy probably would have went after Thomas and let him know that what he did was wrong and hopefully, if Thomas plays by the rules, will give him the ball back and there will be no tears shed and both will have learned a valuable lesson: that small conflicts can be resolved rationally without aid of a third party.
Situation 2: grade 2 Thomas is playing blocks with timothy when timothy catapults one block into the air which everntually (and probably accidentally i might add) finds its way onto the top of thomas' head. The moment it hits him in the head, Thomas whips his head around for supervisors, spots me, and then literally hulks up and starts wailing like a seal. Much restraining is needed on my part after witnessing this and thomas requires 10 minutes just to cool down. So what would have happened if Thomas did not spot me? would he still hulk up? i don't believe so. The emotional reaction came only after he spotted me (the sheriff) and then tried to make his case of the great injustice that was done to his head. Here's what i think would have happened had there been no supervisors present:
the block richochettes off of thomas' head
thomas: oh my. now wasn't that unfortunate?
timothy: oh yes. Please accept my humblest apologies. That block was supposed to fall a few yards to your right. Here old friend. I belive reparations are in order. You may take this block and give my skull a good tapping if you'd like.
thomas: oh come now ol' chap. Put that block down A little bump on the noggin never killed anybody. On another note, I do believe my mouth is getting quite dry. Care to join me for a cup of earl grey?
timothy: why certainly! But we must hurry before any of those horrid teachers spot us. Can you imagine the outrage? We only have enough in the kettle for two. However will we be able to accomodate another?
Thomas: yes yes. let's hurry then. I'll get the sugars.
Yeah. Children only act like children when adults are around. In secret, they're all very mild mannered and English. Moral? Parents and teachers, supervise your kids cause we have too many brits on this earth as it is.
Peas,
dar |
posted by DarrenGene @ 10:58 PM  |
|
| 8 Comments: |
-
yeah, we don't want imperialism to flame up again.
-
that's what i'm saying. Silly superpowers
-
ahahhah you too funny Dar :D
I can only imagine the inner brit that you were :D
I do find it hard to imagine though that w/in each chinese person there lies a inner brit...i love your keen sense of imagination...if only the world was that perfect and English we wouldn't have countries blowing each other up...
That begs the question, what happens when we, as adults, aren't under supervision? Why aren't we as polite and British anymore? Perhaps there's a flaw in your theory...
-
hahaha i love it. thomas sounds like quite the character. maybe next time pretend you dont see and be like, 'really thomas? you look aight to me! lets go play w/ tim instead.
ahhhhh i miss working at camp. have fun dars
-
thx for gettin back to me guyy... no worries.. everything was aiite..
they had a pretty nice (from what i could tell) set of turntables and what not.. looked pretty standard.. of course i had no clue what i was doing but one of the guys jus showed me a bit and since we were jus using basic cds wasn't that hard... kinda fun.. but its so hard to please everyone.. and i didn't have any headphones.. so i couldn't blend the songs well and i had no clue what song i was blending in cuz we were using burnt cds and i didn't know what each track was... anywhos camps aiite... still gonna be here for another month .. so we'll chill after that! wit plenty of ball and softball.. and i need sum mixing pointers.. aitez.. ez
-
oh my goodness.... i almost sprayed water onto my monitor while i was reading your blog.... oh man. =)
-
I recently found out that Ribena comes from an English origin. And all this time I thought it was Asian.
-
update! no posts by darren gene makes johnny cranky
|
| |
| << Home |
| |
| |
|
|
| about me |
|
|
|
| Archives |
|
|
| Affiliates |
|
|
yeah, we don't want imperialism to flame up again.