If They're Not Throwing Shoes at You, You're Not Trying Hard Enough...

Let me start off this epic blog entry (and recap my day today) by playing a scene for you, courtesy of our friends at Youtube and some bored 39-year old male sitting at home who took the time to load it online (Go you!)

In this scene, I (Played handsomely by Arnold Schwarzenegger)am driven to near insanity by a legion of 4 year old kids and finally let loose on all of them.

(The quality of the video is crap, but it's the only video I could find of the scene)




Kintergarden is like the ocean. Really?


Funny eh? Get a good laugh because that is almost exactly what happened to me today while teaching my Wednesday classes.

Now I have the vast majority of my classes on Monday and Tuesday, and about 95% of those kids in the classes are great, well-behaved kids. Wednesday, is a completely different story. On Wednesdays, I have 4 classes running from 11:45 to about 4:30. 3 of them are classes consisting of 4-year olds while the other class is a group of 8-year olds.

With the exception of one class, these kids are easily the most misbehaving, possibly psychotic bunch I've seen yet. I don't know if they all collectively were just having a shitty day or perhaps there is some sort of "Hate on a Ginger" Day in Germany that I am unaware of. But for the good chunk of the day, these kids did everything from scream at the top of their lungs to fighting each other to throwing chairs (not the plastic ones, I'm talking the large wooden variety) and altogether just refusing to do what I ask of them.

Now granted, two things have generally kept me from unleashing hell on them. First and foremost, these kids are, as I said before, 4 and 8 years old. At that age, they've got enough energy to power half the continental U.S. and all they want to do is play, eat, and crap their pants. I wouldn't for a second pretend that when I was at that age, I was some sort of saint, because I wasn't. I was usually hyped up on so much sugar that my teacher's probably thought I had ADHD. Secondly, and the thing that I have had the most trouble with since I've started is, I am typically a very laid-back person. It's not easy for me to go off on someone (unless they deserve it), but it's even harder for me to go off on someone when as little as 3 years ago were still getting breast-fed. It would take a lot for me to yell at a little kid, but after suffering through 3 classes of insanity, I was ready to snap. Naturally, it was a girl in my 4th and final class who made it happen.

My last class of the day is a group of 12 4-year olds. They, generally, have been pretty good. A few bad eggs here and there but nothing too bad. I have them all sitting down on the floor and we're going over English flashcards. As I'm talking, a boy takes his shoe off and starts banging it on the cards. The kids start laughing and I go along with it "Ha ha that's good" I say to myself. Just then, I get a glance in my periph to see a girl standing up and unwinding her shoe at me with full force. It was a full on, Nolan Ryan-esque delivery, folks. The shoe ends up hitting me in the shoulder.

As the kids all erupted in laughter, I finally had it. I felt the rage building up inside of me as I stood up and screamed out "You made me angry! You won't like it when I'm angry" Just then, I clothes began to tear apart as I transformed into a gigantic Green Monster. The children screamed and ran and I roared out "HULK SMASH!!" and proceeded to punch holes through the walls and destroy cars in the parking lot.....

......okay, so it didn't happen quite like that. But I did yell at her for throwing the shoe. The kids quickly realized I didn't find it funny and got quiet. Very...quiet. The girl asked for her shoe back. I refused and instead put it on the highest point of the room I could find and told her she would get it back when the class was over with. At that, she remained silent for the rest of the class until she apologized to me as class gave out, and I promptly gave the shoe back.

This had been one of the things I had been worried about when I took this job in December. How much of this is going to be actual teaching and not simply babysitting for 45 minutes? It will be interesting to see how the next 5 months go. I guess the beauty of it is that luckily I have only signed a 6 month contract. So if this continues, by July, I can find another position teaching somewhere else. If I had signed a 1-year contract, I might as well had been signing my last will and testament.

It's amazing what one will do to earn a living. Here I am, 24 years old with a double major in Communications and International Affairs, who just finished training to teach English to adults, but now finds himself teaching Musical Chairs to 4 year olds.

Boo.....ya.