So yesterday was picture day for the morning Kindergarten classes. They try to arrange it so there is one Korean teacher and one foreign teacher in every picture. I got to be in two of my morning classes Oxford and MIT. Oxford, initially, was a very messy class. On my first day they pretty much chewed me up and spit me out and the Korean teacher ended the misery 10 minutes early for me as she saw that I had enough. Now that the culture shock is over and I am more relaxed that class has turned into a favorite of mine. The class is just wild and I can't change that, so I don't. I don't challenge them too much, make things easy, and just laugh at them for a half an hour four days a week.
That easy going spirit, that has needed to return, backfired on me today as I was left unsupervised with them for a half and hour and they went nuts and had me backed into a corner praying for the time to be finished. I think my paranoia is a remnant of my days volunteering with a local church youth group where the parents wondered why an unmarried male in his thirties would want to work with youth. I remember on one outing an overly concerned mother cornered me in Utah on an outing and questioning me in private about how I interacted with a girl that splashed me in the river...I only did what every other good leader of the youth group did... Splash back (regardless of gender)! Fortunately for me several of my best friends had kids in that youth group that I had been with on several outings so I could say to her that she needed to speak to them BEFORE accusing me of wrongdoing. She did and apologized.
So to get back to the point, Oxford pretty much had me backed into a corner calling me "Daddy" and dog piling me. There was no lesson planning as it was picture day so I was told to wing it. That class is pretty rough... Four boys and eight girls; you can imagine why I'd be paranoid. Perhaps I need to work on that.
That easy going spirit, that has needed to return, backfired on me today as I was left unsupervised with them for a half and hour and they went nuts and had me backed into a corner praying for the time to be finished. I think my paranoia is a remnant of my days volunteering with a local church youth group where the parents wondered why an unmarried male in his thirties would want to work with youth. I remember on one outing an overly concerned mother cornered me in Utah on an outing and questioning me in private about how I interacted with a girl that splashed me in the river...I only did what every other good leader of the youth group did... Splash back (regardless of gender)! Fortunately for me several of my best friends had kids in that youth group that I had been with on several outings so I could say to her that she needed to speak to them BEFORE accusing me of wrongdoing. She did and apologized.
So to get back to the point, Oxford pretty much had me backed into a corner calling me "Daddy" and dog piling me. There was no lesson planning as it was picture day so I was told to wing it. That class is pretty rough... Four boys and eight girls; you can imagine why I'd be paranoid. Perhaps I need to work on that.
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