The Classroom

On Friday my first class had just three kids (2nd graders), two girls and a boy.

I noticed fairly quickly that the boy had an attitude problem: he was uncommunicative, depressed, and just not his usual happy self.

The two girls also seemed unhappy.

After ten minutes or so of trying to get the students involved in learning English, I had had enough; I went to the office and asked my Korean director to talk with the boy and try to find out what was wrong.

She came to my classroom and asked the boy to come with her to the office.

The two girls and I continued on with the lesson for a minute or so, and then they started whispering to each other.

I looked on and waited, as I knew something was coming.

Finally one of the girls said, "Teacher, he is talking to the director . . . can we talk to her too?" (not in those exact words, but the meaning was the same.)  "Can we go to the office?"

Rarely do students want to go to the office, unless it is to ask for a vocabulary translation.

I knew something was up, and suspected (rightly, as it turned out) that the girls wanted to defend their side of the story.

I said, "Ok, let's go," and I took them to the office where my director was talking with the boy.

As it turned out, the boy and the two girls had had an argument before class.

Within ten minutes they were laughing and friends again.

Teaching English sometimes gets a bit complicated . . .