Behaving (& Reacting) Badly

The kids won today. Well, that isn't really even accurate... I just lost. It wasn't even one of our insane days. As I get closer to The End, I think I'm begining to get lazy in the way I react to our students. In that sense, today was a bad day for me.

I lost control twice today and both times ended up making the individual student involved feel worse than she/he deserved to. This morning, E-chan was inseperable from a key chain with a hard plastic doll riding in a small car (imagine the size of a HotWheels car). She wouldn't put it down and was showing it to everyone several times each (sidenote: she has a new toy every time she comes, in addition to Burberry jumpers and shoes). Anyway, fast forward to music time. We're listening to the "Zoo song" and we've all become crocodiles, "chomp! chomp!" with our arms. That's when E-chan pretended to bite my head off, which would have been totally normal and fun, except that she brought the plastic car crashing down square into my forehead. Damn! It hurt SO bad it brought tears to my eyes. All I could do was stand up shocked and hold my head to get away from the stupid car. Erik stepped in and tried to get E-chan to put the toy on the shelf but she ran away. I stepped back into the song at the next animal but then saw E-chan and her friend standing by a wall looking hurt and worried. My heart just broke. I didn't mean to make her feel bad... well, part of me wanted to because it really hurt! I quickly made things right again (by trying to eat her as a lion... which she was cool with), but I still regret my initial reaction. As the adult in the situation, I should have made sure she knew that I didn't think she hurt me on purpose before howling in pain... or more realistically, before letting Erik step in. Bad me.

And then there's K. K is a third or fourth grader, I think. He's really cool. Cool in that way that is a real problem for teachers. He's really smart but doesn't want to do anything you ask him to. According to his mother, he likes English and likes our school... but from seeing him in my small group it would be hard to believe. There are two other kids in the group and recently they've been on fire. They've been into the activities and learning a lot. Unfortunately K just won't play along. I got us through 25 minutes of a 30 minute lesson without any issues tonight but then K just locked up and wouldn't do a damn thing. Actually, that's not accurate. If he would've just not done anything, we probably would have managed. But on top of not participating, he was stealing the cards the other kids were playing with and would only talk in Japanese of pee and poop. With five minutes left (of my work day, which made it even more painful... not that he knew). The other two only have that lesson but K has another half hour or so, so I finally got fed up and just told him to go to the other side of the room for his other lesson. Long story short we had this major face off... he wouldn't move, wouldn't join, etc. so I picked his bag up and moved it for him. He still wouldn't leave and I wouldn't give in (kicks self in retrospect). That's about when he started crying. Part of me suspects that he was faking it, but even so I handled the whole thing wrong from the start. I should have just ignored him and finished. Grrrr!! He just makes me so mad because I can't deal with the other two who really want to do the lesson. Especially because he knows the answers!! Anyway, it was just really un-fun and Tomoko made him apologize and I apologized back but still feel really crappy about the whole deal. They all probably think I'm a huge monster. Lost control... not good for an aspiring junior high school teacher.

Good thing tomorrow is Wednesday. Tomorrow's kids come with their mommies. It will be their job to be in control. It will give me a bit to recover mine.