Living in the Enchanted Forest

The dreaded Winter Academy has finally hit Beijing 3 Kids and Teen Center. We were all a bit crazy thinking about how much added work we would have especially since we didn't receive a schedule until Sunday afternoon. EF refuses to place a registration date on the Summer and Winter Academies, so it makes it harder to schedule the classes and the teachers for the class. I guess it makes sense on the business side, but as a teacher, it makes it hard to provide decent lessons to the students.

Luckily, I am co-teaching a small stars low class with Cindy. This week I taught on Monday and she will teach on Thursday and Friday, and next week we will switch. I have not taught a "Blue" small star class, which is for three-year-olds. I enjoy seeing the the little ones running around the school and give them big smiles, but I've been okay with not teaching them. They are little and they cry more. I would cry too if I were stuck in a class with probably the first ever white person you have ever met talking to you with a Roddy puppet on their hand in a different language! Cindy once told me that one of her blue students talks to himself in Chinese saying, "Why is the pretty lady talking to me like a monster?" So cute!

Anyway... I felt successful with my first class because there were no tears! A few were a little suspicious of me, but they started to warm up to me as the class went on for over two hours! Our main focus of the Winter Academy Small Star Low course if for the students to act out a small star video. In the video for Monday, Roddy and his friends leave the enchanted forest to go to school where they color pigs with either a red, green, blue or yellow pencil. Fascinating! The little ones can't really just put on a show, of course, but they were able to repeat after me after I played their line on the video. They all did a very good job. I have two twin boys in the class, Donald and Darren, and they are infamous around the school due to their obnoxious behavior. Luckily, they have both fallen head over heels for a cute little girl in our class and they fight each other to sit next to her. Ah, young love!

I was able to go out on a break for an hour and a half and did some grocery shopping and went home to eat lunch. I came back to school and lesson planned and did some grading and wrote a few e-mails to parents. Normal Monday things.

Then, yesterday evening, I dragged my heels to my first class with the violent one. He and I started the evening well. We exchanged "hellos" and he wrote his name on the board for me. Then, right after class started and "Roddy" was asking each student, "What's your name?" the violent one went crazy! He ripped off a sticker a little girl had gotten from her primary school which made her cry. He refused to give it back and started to hit the exhausted TA... who had been at the school since 8AM! Finally, I got the violent one to a time out chair and asked the TA to ask a CR to call a parent to get him removed from the classroom. Eric had been sitting quietly in his chair for awhile, and I invited him back to join the class who were sounding out the names of the colors with me. Right after the violent one got settled into the group, a large ceiling air conditioner grate fell right behind the TA, barely grazing her. Luckily, she was fine, but scared of course. We quickly got the students out of the room and into another classroom. I had noticed that more substantial parts of the ceiling were also tearing away. I felt really lucky that the violent one was not in the way of the grate. It was a very lucky event. The rest of the class was pretty much chaos in a new room, but we got on with it.

I was quickly able to share my little story of crisis with Miles, and then got on with my second class. Another trip to the Enchanted Forest with Roddy and friends. This time, Roddy was walking around the Enchanted Forest (EF) saying "Hello" to all of his friends.

I swear, I am amazed I didn't dream about living in the Enchanted Forest or ceiling grates falling during my classes.