This young leaders teenager class was the epitome of a teenager class: crazy, loud, head-wracking, patience-testing, headache-inducing, and reducing-my-being-to-a-piece-of-stale-meat-by-the-end-of-the-day ! Yet, despite them making me wanna pull my hair out and yell many times during class (which I'm glad I don't take the habit of doing otherwise I'd be bald by now), I still love them and I do have to admit that their craziness makes me laugh or entertains me. After all, I used to be a crazy teenager myself, and I can vastly relate to some of the kids' clowning antics.
To be fair, the craziness can be narrowed down to a small group of boys, whom I dub the "trio-gang". Unsurprisingly, they are also the ones that I remember the most from this class. This gang consists of its clear de facto leader, Huy, a dubstep breakdancer boy who was always clad in admittingly cool teenager gear complete with oversized trainers with rocket wings on them, and who always vied for attention and made his voice heard at any moment imaginable, although I'm not going to lie, he is a good natural performer and entertainer. In fact, he was the only student who made my system of "if you speak in Vietnamese, you have to give an impromptu presentation in front of the class for 1 minute to a random topic of my choice" backfire, in that he would purposefully speak in Vietnamese so that he could get in trouble and pay the punishment, since he loved attention and getting in front of the class... So with time, I had to individualize a system specific for him wherein if he spoke in Vietnamese, he would get the punishment, but if he wanted to retain the punishment (that is, give a speech) he had to behave after that, otherwise I'd take the punishment away from him. Haha! Huy was also the only kid in class who would respond to a question in a way like this:
(After the students talk in pairs about each other's weekends)
Teacher - Huy, can you tell us what your friend did in the weekend?
Huy - Yes, at 1 am, he slept. And at 2 am, he slept. And at 3 am, he was still sleeping, and at 4 am, he was still sleeping......
etc...
Sigh.... On the other hand, he still had an impact on the whole class as his absence was always greatly felt on days he wasn't there, lending over to a comparatively uncomfortable unenthusiastic energy-less atmosphere. At the end of the day, you always appreciate the class clown and they are always one of the most memorable and charming students in teachers' careers.
His sidekick is Quang, a mature and sweet guy full of affect, always ready to put his rowdier mate in check. He makes my heart melt when one of the other guys make an offensive joke or misbehave in a way that could be interpreted as disrespectful to the teacher, and he scolds at them and tells them not to be like that. He is also a lady's man, always sensitive to girls- in fact one of the speeches he gave was about how he had a sad weekend because he lost the trust of his best female friend and he would do anything to earn it back. Awww *heart breaks.... He was always the only kid who would extend to me a sincere goodbye at the end of class, and on our very last day, he thanked me for being a good teacher and hoped to see me again. Awwwww *heart shatters into pieces...
I will also remember the cute nerd of the class, Gia Bao, a young enthusiastic boy who always took so much care in all of the class activities we did! His care in the lessons and games motivate me to keep providing good lessons in times when I think it is hopeless in such a crazy class! In many competitive games, every time his pair-team would win a round, he and his partner, in perfect nerd fashion, would high-five each other in the air very excitedly and cheer, while nobody else would care much about winning. They are so cute! Also, consistent with the prototypical nerd, he would never fail to put up his hand and point out to me when somebody had cheated or when somebody had spoken Vietnamese or made an error in their response. Haha.......
Without further ado, here are our goodbye photos!!
No comments:
Post a Comment