Growing Daisies

On a daily basis, I crack up at work. Teaching kindergarteners is a source of constant, in-your-face, draining, interactive entertainment.

We are giving them this huge amount of information while trying to help them assert themselves as individuals and be creative, and not act like babies. This is hard, especially in Korean society, where children are treated like princes and princesses who must conform to all Korean norms. So you try not to baby them too much in order to maintain a balance between home and school, Eastern and Western culture.

I have started collecting some of these witty remarks my kids, and others, have made.

• Today in Social Studies, I taught my students about rivers and lakes. They love foreign words, so I taught them about Lake Titicaca and the Mississippi River. Jerry says to me, he says:

  "Teacher....is there a Mistersippi River? And are Mississippi and Mistersippi MARRIED?!"

• My little Jennifer is very wise on the ways of the human body. When my class found out I had some hair on my legs, they were bewildered. I explained to them that when they get older, they'll get hair in places other than their heads. Little Jennifer says to me, she says:

  "Teacher, I will get hair here too!" (points to genital area) "In my jamji!" (The Korean word for the female private parts)
  She proceeds to skip down the hall, singing "Jamji! Jamji! Jamji!"

• My students have "Korean time" where they have 30 minutes to spend with their Korean teacher (the rest of the time they are with the foreigners to maximize English speaking). Joanne teacher made butterfly masks with them, colored, laminated, and rubber-banded. When I came back in, I generally joked about needing a butterfly net to catch all of the butterflies.
  One of the boys, John C. says to me, he says:

  "Teacher! I'm not really a butterfly! I'm a people! This is just a MASK!"

There are also a lot of one-liners that slay me:

"FEED ME!!!!"
- John K.

"Teacher! And the monster is thinking...'Ant!'"
- John C. and John K. (their monsters are ALWAYS thinking ant, because that’s what the boys know how to spell on their own)

"Oops! I'm old! I forgot the glue!"
- John K.

"Smelly Canadian people!"
- John C.

"Oops! I forgot to be angry!"
- Jennifer

Me: Well, it looks like we have a mystery on our hands!
Jennifer: (looks at her hands, bewildered)

This, people, is why I absolutely love this job.

• Note: The concept of "growing daisies" was borrowed from Matt.