my super sweet summer class. i only taught them for 2 weeks, but i had a lot of fun with them. since the class was so small, it was really nice to actually have time to get to know some of my students and talk about what they were learning.
the smallest girl in the front is hillary, and she is the craziest little girl that i have met in china. so much fun! we were very in sync with each other- if my energy level was very high in class, hers would be very high too, and if my energy started to wane, hers would as well. one pretty funny moment in class was when i was teaching them the word 'method'. the only example i could think of was to explain hillary's multiple methods of driving me crazy. we were all laughing pretty hard. then hillary made me go around the class and say each student's method of driving me crazy. she seemed to really relish the fact that they were able to have this kind of effect on me.
somehow she got the nickname 'chicken', which she gets mad about but i think she secretly likes, so there she is below with her chicken drawing.
i always like to start my classes off by asking a question to break the ice, so one day hillary decided to mock me a little and put up her own question on the board. the question asked, "what is your IQ number?" pretty funny. this is the kind of girl who would just say anything that's on her mind, ie, "teacher, your drawing is really bad." thanks. she is very naturally humorous and very creative. if i gave an in class writing assignment, she always wrote hers the quickest, and i always found hers the most interesting....by that i think i mean entertaining.
the girl to the left of me flashing the victory sign is betty. at 16 she was the oldest student in the class, and was very much the mother in the room- she would help the other kids translate, open their candy for them if they couldn't, lol. but she never acted too cool for the other kids. it seemed like her and hillary were actually friends! in fact, i got a little worried for a while that hillary was affecting her because all of a sudden one day she whined, "teacherrrrr, so much homework!" i called her out on it, i was like "no betty, don't do this, you are becoming like hillary!", and she laughed. i guess even the nice ones like to try to push their teacher's buttons a little. every day after class as she was leaving she would say, "thank you teacher!" it was a good way to end the day for me. she always did her homework, and she always did it well. one day i asked the kids if they knew where i could catch a certain bus and they didn't really know, but after class betty grabbed her cousin (who works there) to help me. such a sweetie. on the last day of class, she gave me a candle and a really, really nice note.
such good memories of my little class :)
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