You wouldn't normally think the two go together, I suppose, but when you're dealing with kids, anything goes.
I was teaching my 7-year-olds the word 'rare' yesterday, and I was trying to get them to come up with sentences for the word, so I said, "Well, what about diamonds? Those are rare."
My students disagreed. "No, Ms. Rivera. I have lots of diamonds in my house," Raina informed me. The rest of them chorused their agreement. I shook my head. "No, Raina. Diamonds are expensive. People don't have lots of them."
"Really, Ms. Rivera! I have shoes with diamonds on them. My mom bought them for me."
"Raina, they don't put diamonds on shoes. And diamonds are too expensive - I bet if you ask your mom she will tell you they aren't real diamonds, they just look similar."
"No, my mom is rich. She bought the shoes for me!"
We just learned the word 'rich' recently too, so they have been using that. Now, granted, my children come from very well-off families; they live in one of the nicest areas of Seoul, most of them have housekeepers (who they refer to as their aunts. bewilders me when they talk about their Chinese aunt....), and their parents pay somewhere around a grand a month to go to our school. But, they are in no way sending their children to school in diamond-encrusted shoes.
I was just shaking my head at all this in bewilderment - there are some arguments you just can't win, especially when you're up against 5 young children, so I was going to just move on when Julius spoke up.
"But, Ms. Rivera, those shoes are expensive. They cost like... $14 or something-" He cut off here because I had started laughing. I try not to laugh at my kids, because they can be really sensitive sometimes, but this giggle just bubbled up and I couldn't help myself, I just laughed for about a minute straight, with them wondering why for the entire time. And really, can you blame me?
Speaking of Julius -he comes up with pretty funny stuff a lot of the time, mostly without meaning too. He's super-smart, though he has a complex about it sometimes and I have to remind him who is the teacher. He was absent a week or so ago, and Eva, who works the desk downstairs, told me he was sick. When he came back a few days later I asked him what was wrong.
"Julius, were you sick? Did you go to the hospital?" (Kriss, my coteacher, told me his mom had said they were at the hospital when Kriss called to check)
"No, I wasn't sick. My sister was sick so we went to the hospital." (She's 11 or so.)
"Oh, wow. Is she okay? What was wrong?"
"Umm, yeah she's okay. I don't know what was wrong, but she had to get a shot because she's short...but, I'm shorter than she is, so... ah..I don't know."
It's always amazing to me the things that kids will accept as logical, and the things they will not. For example, the girls in Mars Class like to tell me I'm pregnant. I'm pretty sure they know I'm not, but they like to tease me. JiHoo started talking about it the other day, and I attempted to cut her off. But it didn't go exactly how I planned.
"JiHoo, I can't be pregnant. If I was, I couldn't teach at EWAS anymore because I would have to take care of the baby."
"No, Ms. Rivera. You could take the baby to your sister."
"No, my sister is too young to take care of a baby. She's only 18."
"Well, take it to your mom's house. She will take care of it."
"I can't take it to my mom's house. She lives in America. And she doesn't have a house."
JiHoo looked surprised at this. I'm fairly certain she doesn't have much experience with homelessness - there doesn't seem to be much of it in our area of Seoul - not that she would be exposed to anyway.
"Really, why not?"
"She's poor."
"Oh."
See? Why in the world can children just accept things like someone not having a house, but not the fact that there are not real diamonds on a pair of $14 dollar shoes??? -sigh- I am confused.
But the second part of my story - the underestimation. My 5 year-olds continually surprise me with how quickly they learn things, and how fast they put things together. Sometimes I'm so frustrated with them, and then they will respond perfectly to a bit of English they've never heard before, or will explain why they did something in a very clear way, instead of shrugging it off (which my Mars Class are more apt to do).
Eugene surprises me a lot in this way, which probably says more about me than it does about him. He's a sweet kid, but kinda flighty - he's one of those children about whom my mom would say, "I swear you'd lose your head if it wasn't attached." Eugene frequently lines up to go home with everyone else - without his backpack, wearing his slippers. And patience is something that I need to work on, which I hope is slowly but surely happening. Not that I don't occasionally lose it - but I'm trying. Now that I think about it... I'm very flightly myself at times, even though I am very intelligent, so I should keep that in mind when I want to scold him and just be patient. If he's anything like me, there's a lot of things going on in his head that are not always apparent from the outside.
(Reminds me, actually, of the first day of second grade. Mom and I were waiting for the bus in front of the house, and I was very unimpressed by the idea of 2nd grade. "I wonder what 4th grade will be like?" I asked my mom ,and I'm sure she thought I was ridiculous, because she responded, "Siobhain, I'm trying to get you ready for *2nd* grade. We'll worry about that later!" I always did like to think ahead...)
So, anyway, back to Eugene. We're reading a book currently called Me! Me! ABC (which has these really creepy little puppet characters. They give me the shivers.) and the letter K is "Kiss Me" with L being "Love Me." The K page has two of the characters standing next to each other, a freak-panda trying to get a freak-turtle to kiss her. There's another of the little guys, named Marty, up in the corner of the page and he's crying. The first time we read the book, I got to that page and the kids got distracted by something (probably JaeHyun) and got up from the mat and came to where I was sitting and looked at the book.
Eugene pointed at the Marty picture, and said, "Ms. 'Bera, he's sad."
"Yes... why? I don't know." (which was true, I hadn't really thought about it, though I suppose I could have come to the same conclusion he reached if I had.)
"Uhh... (he switches to Korean) well, this friend (points at Marty) likes this friend (points at freak-panda), but she doesn't like him, (freak-panda) likes this friend (freak-turtle). So he's sad."
"Oh! That's very good, Eugene!" -I am kinda flabbergasted by the complexity of his analysis-
Just goes to show you - don't underestimate anyone, even when they are 5.
And now, I have to get to bed. Tomorrow's a big day - a new friend in Pluto class!! We're very excited. Kriss told the kids and they were all jumping up and down. Clara even did some projectional counting, which I thought was pretty cool for someone her age, even if she is really smart. "Ms. 'Bera, today Pluto class is 1, 2, 3, boys but tomorrow Pluto class is 1, 2, 3, 4 boys!"
