One thing that I hate, that really disgusts me, is students who play with their wounds.
I understand that sometimes having a wound, and especially a bandage on it, is a symbol of childhood pride. I felt that way when I was a kid.
I understand that I have a different perspective as an adult, and that--being consciously aware of these two vastly different perspectives, yet choosing to hold to one of them--I am perhaps a hypocrite. I believe in fairness, after all.
Yet when the boy in my class last week took his bandage off of his unhealed, scraped knee and began playing with it (the bandage), I couldn't help but be disturbed.
I told him to go put the bandage in the trash can.
He reluctantly did so.
The worst situation (refer back to this post's title) was when I taught in Japan.
I was teaching a class of 3rd graders at a satellite school, a rented room in a private house in a small city in the Hiroshima area.
It happened to be parent's day, a day when parents could observe the classes.
One of the students, a really cute and fun girl, had a scab on her knee. As I moved through the day's vocabulary, she kept picking at the scab until it produced a few drops of blood.
I motioned to her to cut it out, and would have done more, but her mother was sitting in the corner watching me.
When she picked off a piece of the scab and put it in her mouth I almost threw up.
Maybe it's that summer is now in full swing and students are running around outside more often, but they do seem do have more cuts and bruises and bandages.
If they start to do anything gross with those wounds in my classes, however, I will not hold my tongue, even if a mom does happen to be present.
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