The first week of elementary school, I sat in classrooms observing the learning environment. I had never witnessed such a sight! In disbelief, I wrote the following journal entry:
These kids are savages. They are all yelling at once and jumping out of their seats. For as much as they goof off and don't listen; they sure do ask a lot of the teacher's attention. During the middle of a lesson, they run up to her in huddles and bombard her with questions-- some productive and some obsolete. They talk to me in their native tongue (Hebrew) as if I understand what they are saying- but to me it just sounds like a mix between gibberish and charades.
My key phrases in response to their questions are:
- I dont know
- Very little Hebrew
-What's that?
- How do you say?
Anyways, these kids are wild monkeys. Everything goes in one ear and out the other, with the attention span of a gnat. They ask me inappropriate things like what the word "bulbul" means in English (male genitals). They know i'm learning words so they'll throw in there "butt" and start cracking up when I naively repeat it. When the teacher reprimands them, they wine and refuse to do what she asks of them, over and over again. The teacher will bang her marker on the table loudly- but the kids still talk over her. Then she raises her voice by 20 decibels, which puts the quiet on hold for about 5 seconds, as they continue talking, throwing things across the table, laughing, making farting noises with their armpits, and talking back to the teacher.
To call these kids a handful is an understatement. The teacher spends a good 1/2 to 3/4 of the lesson trying to calm them down, while threatening to take away their recess. To an Israeli child, not having recess is a bigger punishment than having their parents called into school to discuss their poor behavior.
These kids are not a headache, they are a straight up migraine. & yet, it's in some way fulfilling to wake up every day and show up for the people who look forward to seeing me the most.
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