My kids are weird... read on...

September 22, 2011

Today (thankfully, after school was finished for the day) I found out that my friend David was murdered back home. I can’t even begin to describe how much I’m going to miss his laugh, and just his warm, happy presence. I never saw him without a smile on his face and pure joy in his heart. To think that he was chosen at random by a drunk man with a hunting rifle just makes me sick. My friends, my family and everyone at Simpson is grieving for David, and I wish I was with them. I think this is the first time I’ve had the thought, “I wish I was home”. I’ll miss you David. The world won’t be the same without you.

September 24, 2011

Some updates: My first class is indeed an expat class, because my Arabic co-teacher can’t understand most of them. HER class is an Arab class though, and they can’t understand me. (Which made them act like monsters on Wednesday, but whatever.) Thursday was our first day switching classes, but since school lets out early the first week, I only had my 2^nd class for like an hour before they started filtering out to go home. They were much better in class on Thursday. One of my boys in that class even brought me a few roses from his garden at home, saying, “Miss, these are for you from my mommy.” It was adorable! My “weekend friend” (he said it, not me. We really are all too busy to talk during the week) Imad called me up and the group went out to Emirates Palace to a Japanese club, and then we unsuccessfully tried to get into a few nightclubs. (One didn’t work because of the gender ratio in our group being mainly guys, and the other because Nader wasn’t in alignment with the dress code.) So we gave up and went out to eat at some Lebanese place they know. There were come pretty interesting combos involved (a wrap with beef, tomato, pickle, cheese and French fries) but it all tasted really good. LOL. It was a good distraction from the earlier events and sad news from the day. Yesterday we went to Aloft and sat at the pool all day, and then went out at night. Danced a lot, made some new friends, you know… How I do. I’m bruised from being thrown all over the pool, I have a cut on my leg from God-only-knows-what, and my toes are still numb a full 18 hours after ditching my heels for flip-flops; signs of a pretty decent weekend, if I do say so myself. Bring on the kids.

September 26, 2011

My kids are weird. Seriously. Today in L, Khaled decided that he wasn’t going to listen and was distracting the other kids, so I asked him to come sit at the front next to me. He ignored me and kept distracting, and I kept calling him… “Khaled… Khaled…KHALED”. He started yelling over and over again that his name was Mario, which sent my otherwise attentive class into giggles and interruptions of “Miss, my name is Spongebob!” and “Miss, my name is Spiderman!” Determined that he wasn’t going to win, I put a chair over in the corner and told him to go sit there. Of course, he ignored me so I had to physically pick him up and put him in the chair, then direct Sarah (the class assistant) to keep an eye on him because I was not going to waste the time of the other 24 kids. He sat there for about 15 minutes while I got the class situated in the next activity, then we had a chat and I let him join. And I kid you not, when it was time to go downstairs for recess and they were lining up, Khaled cried because he didn’t get to be in the front of the line. (The person in front gets to hold the teacher’s hand.) What the heck!!!

In my other class, I have 3 boys who I generally have some trouble with, but today they were monsters. One of them was threatened with a phone call home tomorrow if he doesn’t shape up. It was SO ridiculous today that I couldn’t even help myself from laughing at the end of the day. Most of them are good though. And when we go downstairs to the basement for recess, I have 3 or 4 of my girls who would rather stand next to me than go play. It’s so cute!

Yesterday I asked the kids to bring something small from home to show the class, and that it should start with the letter ‘s’. Considering the fact that they’re 5 years old, I expected that only a few would remember. I was right! We had 4 show-and-tellers. Menah brought a picture of a strawberry in her pocket; Nusaiba brought a little plastic snake; Muhammad A. brought a little toy Smurf; and little Mohammad M. brought a soft snake toy. They were so freaking adorable standing in front of the class saying what they brought! Then the kids who forgot were kind of bummed out, but I told them that we could do this for every new letter we learned, so they will all have more chances to remember.

Side note: When Muhammad A’s mom picked him up, she asked me if we were already starting the curriculum. I told her that we hadn’t technically started, but I was introducing some things, and that Muhammad was doing a great job! (He really is a great little boy.) She was glad to hear it, and told me how excited he had been when he came home and tried to decide what to bring to class starting with ‘s’. I’m so glad! I hope I can keep up the excitement all year!

I was thinking about it today, and in the 50 kids of my two classes, I have the following: 5 boys named Muhammad (various spellings), 3 boys named Ahmed, 3 girls named Mariam (various spellings), 2 boys named Ibrahim, 3 boys named Khalifa, and 2 girls named Haya. Ay ay ay!!!

The kids in L (my mostly Arab class) are slowly getting the hang of having an English teacher around. Honestly, I’m almost positive that they all understand me but some are holding out so they can have an excuse to not listen. Because they all let me know when they’re finished doing the activity, when they want a drink of water, etc. I know now that Haya wants to chat with me about everything that she does away from school, Sheikha’s mom had a new baby yesterday, and my smiley, happy Youcef cried when we were practicing writing our names because he didn’t know how to do his. (I showed him, and promised we’d practice, and he calmed right down… Poor guy.)

I really lucked out by getting GREAT kids in my classes this year. The other teachers have mentioned that none of their kids know their letters, none can write their names, and other things like that. My kids are so smart!!! But soooo strange....