“Sorry, I forgot to tell you she has seizures sometimes”

I got a new student this week, bringing my class size up to 7. I still have the smallest class, but in a few weeks I will have another student, making it 8. I will finally have the same number of students as Toriann and Casey. I hope my class can continue to be the class all the teachers are looking forward to teaching each day. As one of my co-workers said, “We all need a Pine class once a day to keep us sane.” (My class name is Pine in case I never mentioned that before) My new girl hasn’t spoken up much, but she smiles at me often, so I guess she likes school. I was thinking about how it must be overwhelming as a child to come to a school where the teacher looks different than you and doesn’t speak the same language as you. I would have been the shy, quiet student too. On Friday at the end of the day in gym class she had a seizure. I wasn’t around for this since they have a separate gym teacher, but Gordon, who was teaching Drama right next to the gym class, brought my class up early and informed me what had happened. The other kids in my class were very concerned for her, and I had to reassure them that she was better now and would be okay. Again, how scary for this girl, who, on her second day of school has a seizure in front of her classmates. My kids kept pointing to their mouth and saying “out of mouth.” I got they were referring to the foam, but it I felt bad for everyone involved. It turned out she has them often. She fell asleep shortly afterwards and her Mom came and took her to the hospital. After school, Liz, my Korean helper, who I adore and does an amazing job, came up and to me and said “Sorry, I forgot to tell you she has seizures sometimes.” In all fairness to Liz, she is very busy, and probably did not realize Cindy would have a seizure on her second day of school, but still, these little bits of information are important! It just reminded me again of how dependent I am on Liz to inform me of all the little details that I don’t know about because I can’t communicate with the parents or even the children sometimes.

Liz has to call all the parents from mine and Gordon’s class every evening and give an update to how their child is doing. I find this a bit ridiculous because really what can change from simply one day. She did tell me that Chloe goes home and talks about me all the time and tries to speak only English with her Mom. I guess her Mom is getting tired of Chloe only speaking English at home. One of the class rules is to only speak English. I hadn’t been too strict about enforcing this during lunchtime until this week. I had my class practice what they would say to a classmate if they forgot to speak English; I told them to remind their friend to speak English and talk back to them in English, not Korean. We worked on this all week at lunch time, but Tong Hu was having a hard time with this rule. On Friday after everyone had eaten lunch and they were having free time, I had gone to the teacher’s room to fill up my water bottle when Gordon came in and told me he had just walked by my class where he witnessed Ray following my rule about English. Tong Hu had been speaking in Korean, so Ray said to him (in a nice voice), “remember to speak in English.” He then continued to speak to Tong Hu in only English. I was proud of Ray for doing this, even when I was not in the classroom. It was the first time I actually really saw how what I am saying is having some kind of effect on the students!

This week teaching the other 6 year classes went better than other weeks. I realized I had to go back to the basic with a few of those classes and teach the routine again. I also am discovering what routine I actually need and what works and doesn’t work. Having my textbooks and knowing what I am teaching has made this process a lot easier and slowly my classes are realizing what they need to do each day without me having to tell them. This week I had to teach one of my classes how to line up, we practiced about 3 times every day, but finally by Friday they lined up with no pushing and eyes forward on the first try, I was very proud of them. Another 6 year old class was a bit wild and crazy when the year first started, but they have actually come to be one of my favorite classes now. They no longer get out of their seats when they aren’t supposed to, and are getting much better at raising their hands and not just screaming out answers. They still have their moments, but I now look forward to seeing them each day. I definitely feel fortunate about how much I am enjoying teaching and like my co-workers; it is a great feeling actually looking forward to work each day.