Kindergarten Kiddies

Even though many moments spent teaching are moments spent in complete emotional, spiritual, and physical exhaustion, others are spent in moments of thinking: "Shut the $#@% up before I beat you with a bamboo stick!" which requires complete emotional, spiritual, and especially physical control. Days do exist, though where I find them completely adorable. These are days when I am enabled, through the grace of God to transform from their teacher into a mere passive observer. The day upon which these photos were taken serves as an immaculate example of how children undergo some magical devil to angel transfiguration when they are no longer 'my children.' Their Chinese kindergarten teachers took the reins (which tightened considerably, I'm sure upon the children being able to understand what they were told to do) for the day as we took our first and probably only field trip. (I just don't think the Chinese teachers were too thrilled when one us 'accidentally' pushed one of the kids into the fish feeding pond).

Rex is the man you see above. It is widely believed that he has autism. I think its cute how he's fascinated with the ceiling fan and will stare at it for days without proper intervention. He also does the same thing with the cd player. He's a cute kid and I'm sometimes secretly envious of his ability to seemingly completely detach himself from everything.

This is Shayla, Queen of Indistinguishable Utterances. Maybe it's her overbite that causes what she says to be extremely muffled, or perhaps it's that she's not old enough to speak--in any language. Her obvious overbite combined with some wicked pigtails a few days ago to make me feel that I was in Chinese Who-ville. She's great for my sense of humor self-esteem because everything I do or say in Shayla's mind is gut-ripping hilarious and when she laughs, it sounds like she's been smoking since the day she left the womb.

This is Sharon, Daughter of Destruction. She looks and acts sweet most of the time, but has been known to destroy complete collections of students' artwork in less than thirty seconds. When I am excusing these little buggers to go home or to their next class, I sometimes get their attention by asking, "Who has the biggest smile on their face?" Sharon evidently has underdeveloped facial muscles, because no matter how hard she tries, she can't seem to get those lips to curve upward. The faces she makes in the attempt are priceless, though.


Jenny, one of the Chinese teachers is demonstrating how to properly herd children. Thanks to her and others like her, I was able to see my kids as kids for a day. Days like this will hopefully become less of a necessity in the future as I learn to rely upon things other than bamboo to control my class.