Shake Your Tail Feathers

If I were to write a news article solely on the past week, it would be entitled: Train Wreck Brings New Life to Maple Bear Classroom.

Franzi-Teacher’s Worst 24-Hours Ever began at the zoo. Oh yes. A zoo where majestic, but slightly emaciated, tigers, lions, and bears glower at you and wish they could have a crumb of you at lunch. Now, surprisingly, I did not use the trip as a way to show children that caging up eight tigers in the same small area was a bad idea. Nope, the worst I did was pick up a child and threaten to throw her to the giraffes. Oh, come on. They are herbivores, straight up. Anyway, the real purpose of the trip was to allow my kiddies to see all these bears I’d been talking about in class: European brown bears, American black bears, Malayan sun bears... I reassured myself that having the Moon bear locked up was probably better than letting it get its guts ripped out by an over-zealous poacher (if a poacher can be over-zealous; more on this later). So, with all my kids lined up in matching Maple Bear shirts, we stuffed ourselves into a large van and heading to Seoul Land. Now, I’m going to skip a bunch of zoo details, although I will mention that it is easy to forget how short kindergarten kids are. Every time I saw the bear do something amusing, I’d squat down to their height and be like: “Oops, yeah you can’t see a thing. Sorry, buddy.” I started lifting my kids onto the railing until the tallest girl in my class destroyed my arms… then I just decided not to mention it when the bears were being awesome.

i.s. After having walked around th mountain for a good hour, the kids began to complain that their "bones were broken" and their "muscles were gone". I ignored the complaints and relished the fact that they were being so descriptive.

Once we'd visited the bears, we headed back down the mountain and visited other animals until lunchtime. This is where The Worst of Times began. One of my dear students, a new addition to our tribe, vocalized loud and clear that he did not like one of his fellow classmates. The class’s cheerful chatter stopped abruptly and everyone stared. I hunkered down next to him and asked him what just happened and all I got was: “I don’t like XXXX! I don’t like her! I don’t like her!” Good grief. Then another kid whispered that he’d heard him say he doesn’t like YYYY either. Another girl victim? I saw a pattern developing.

We started discussing how saying such things hurt people and how we are all supposed to be a team and how we can only learn in a safe environment, et cetera. I explained that we couldn’t go on seeing the other animals with such animosity pervading our troop. Well, while all the other kids were dying to see the raccoons and were pleading for the boy to say sorry, this little man just started bawling his eyes out, shouting how much he hated girls. Come again?

Thankfully, my Korean teacher, Yuni, took the other students and continued the journey towards the raccoons. Meanwhile, I was left with this serious case of juvenile misogyny. Let’s call him Rufus. Negotiation began:

“Why did you say you don’t like XXXX?"
“I don’t like her! I don’t like her! I don’t like her!’
“I’m fully aware, Rufus, but why?”
(Insert a copious amount of tears and strangers giving me sympathetic nods.)
Literally 5 minutes later: “I hate girls! I hate Maple Bear!”
(Now, let me remind you again that this student is newer than me. Oh, and let me inform you that he’d already mouthed off to the director during the entrance tests.)
I began to explain to him that I actually was under the impression that he liked Maple Bear because he seemed to enjoy being in class, smiled a lot, and he was already getting the hang of the routines and such. The tears momentarily stopped as he listened. But, as soon as I started in on the situation at hand, he began crying again: “It’s her fault!”
Silence.
Finally, he said, “She cut the line!”
She cut the line. She cut the line while at the zoo, where everyone’s hopping around like baboons? Really?
Being as diplomatic as possible, I explained that since we weren’t really respecting “line” formation at the zoo, it didn’t matter if someone decided to walk a bit ahead of him or not. When he said he was still angry, I told him that he could feel as angry as he desired, but that he could not express it the way he did. Anyway, after another five minutes of him saying he’d never apologize, I told him that it didn’t work like that and dragged him off. We marched past all the wildcats which I had personally wanted to hang out with, to confront his sworn enemy. One apology later, he was dancing around like an idiot.

It gets better.

On the way home, I asked who had enjoyed the zoo. What do you know? Rufus is waving his hand around, literally bouncing in his seat. Then, when I asked which animal they liked seeing best, he said the tigers. What? You mean the tigers you didn’t see because we marched right past them? And THEN, he flirts with one the girls all the way home. At this point, I was so amused by the entire situation that I just sat back and thought about how much it must rock to be six years old.

The next day, thinking the hate train had wrecked at the zoo, I was shocked to witness an incredible amount of name-calling, pushing, tattling, selfishness, and the like. With my best disappointed voice, I called my kids to join me on the carpet for a serious Pau-Wau. I don’t even have the energy to describe all the shenanigans that took place throughout the day, but let it be enough when I say that, by the end of the day, I had led my class through three of those Pau-Waus. As they lined up to go home, I asked them if tomorrow would be a better day. With heads bobbing, I smiled at them and hoped their childhood amnesia wouldn’t kick in overnight.

My hoping paid off. Friday was the Best Day Ever in Franzi-Teacher’s classroom at Maple Bear School in Anyang, South Korea. It got to the point where I was getting concerned about getting perma-smile lines. The day started with us writing a creative story together. The story got so colourful that at one point a unicorn came and kicked a bee away from the sleeping cat named Salmon. This may not seem significant, but try being creative in a language you have not yet mastered.

After snack time, I was working one-on-one with the students, having them share with me the information they’d learned about bears throughout the week. When one of my boys got to talking about Asiatic black bears, I explained to him that they are hunted and killed for their gall bladders. He asked me why and I told him that some people still thought that the bile in the gall bladder could cure us from diseases. He stood up in his seat, did a fist pump in the air, and shouted: “I will make for that people to die!” I probably should have told him that wasn’t the route to go, but I felt like I’d be lying to him.

At the end of the day, I taught the kids the Funky Chicken. Amanda Piette, you would have died. I wasn’t even prepared for the chaos that ensued after shouting “Let me see your cock-a-roach!” I don’t think the kids have ever had such a good cardio workout from singing a song. It was beautiful to hear them sing and watch them shake their tail feathers all the way out the door.