THINGS TEACHERS THINK (OR AT LEAST THIS TEACHER)

I'm sure that there are some other teachers out there that think these things...I hope...

1) I have become aware of exactly how beautifully long even 5 minutes can be. Between my first 4 classes, there are no breaks. Not even enough for me to go to the bathroom. Literally no minutes. So when one of the classes is a few minutes late, I enjoy every lingering second of silence and freedom. Every. Single. One.

Sometimes I wonder if any of my teachers thought this (answer: most definitely yes) - but those precious few seconds I have to myself between :05 and :10 for the last 3 hours of the day ARE MINE AND MINE ALONE.

Don't you DARE come in early. This is my private quiet time where I can be an adult for 5 minutes and have a goddamned Ding Dong because I haven't eaten for hours. If you so much as BREATHE in the direction of the door before that clock hits 10 after, I WILL END YOU.

2) Some of my students are very smart. This doesn't necessarily mean they're super great at English, just that they understand what I'm saying and can follow directions. I love these kids. They are glorious and make me happy. There is a small handful of them (maybe 4) who are dense as a goddamned pile of concrete. These kids frustrate me to no end. We will literally do the exact same thing as we did last week, and the week before, and these kids will act like they have no concept of what is happening.

Most of the kids are middle ground kids, which is perfectly acceptable. But some of them have the attention span of a goldfish - they can remember how to say "ambulance" (WTF, that word is hard!) but they cannot remember to SHUT THEIR DAMN PIE HOLES WHILE I'M TALKING.

Me: Guys, quiet down. Teacher is talking. No talking while teacher is talking.
Kids: Ok teacher... *10 seconds pass*
*talking resumes*
Me: Seriously. If I have to tell you to stop talking again, you won't get a sticker. If you don't get a sticker, then you won't get candy *audible gasp from class* YEAH. So quiet.
*10 seconds later, talking resumes*
Me: *in my head but it feels like I'm yelling it* SWEET MERCIFUL SHIT, IF YOU DON'T SHUT YOUR MOUTHS WITHIN THE NEXT MILLISECOND, I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL KILL ANYONE YOU'VE EVER LOVED

3) The vast majority of the issues come from the kindergarten classes. The older students have their moments, but are generally reasonable and listen to me to a degree I can at least tolerate. The kindergarteners can literally not sit in chairs correctly. They're always turning around, putting their feet on someone else's chair, flailing about like an inflatable tube man at a car dealership. And they TRY. That's the part I can't understand. I see they're genuinely considering listening and obeying me when I tell them to turn around and be quiet. They don't do it to be dicks, they just have some crazy monster inside them that forces them to move AT ALL TIMES.

I have experience with this since I was, yes, once a child. We can have my parents fact-check this if you like, but I KNOW I never had a problem understanding IN ANY LANGUAGE when I was supposed to sit down and shut up. If a teacher told me to do something, I did it, immediately. And yes, this was when I was their age. Yes, I remember. I never talked when I wasn't supposed to. I never randomly got up and walked around. I never yelled. I didn't sit like a fucking gymnast twisted into a pretzel. IT IS REALLY NOT HARD TO FUNCTION AS A CHILD, I KNOW BECAUSE I DID IT.

I don't remember having some giant internal struggle to keep myself quiet and semi-still during class or other quiet times. I'm pretty sure it didn't need to be explained more than once. When an adult is talking, you are quiet. It's pretty fucking simple, yet it's an insane struggle AT LEAST once or twice a week in each class.

4) Sometimes the kids have to do "projects" - quotes are because it's basically drawing or coloring something that we told them to draw or color. There's always one kid who either cannot draw himself out of a paper bag, or one who just doesn't want to do whatever it is we're doing.

A week or so ago, the kids were coloring a project. They were supposed to draw animals. Many (most) of the animals look like they were contaminated with radioactive waste and melted into small blobs of animal parts, but there were a couple of kids who just couldn't do anything. One kid had drawn a few orange penguins and came up and told me "teacher finished!" I look at it and am like "Well, whatever. If you think you're done, you're done." As I was holding the entirely orange drawing, I was told that it "wasn't enough" because if their parents saw that, "they'd be very disappointed."

Well not in me, I didn't draw it. Get mad at your kid for really liking orange. It's not my fault they're completely untalented at drawing. This isn't a drawing class. I'm sure Sally or Elsa or T-Rex is fantastic at some other subject, so art may not be their thing. But no, I was supposed to stand over the child and force them to draw more things. If you're upset that your kid can't draw, shouldn't you take that up with the kid?? I mean the damn kid can remember "ambulance" and pronounce it correctly, why the living hell do you care about a couple of misshapen orange penguins?

5) There's also one kid that's just a straight up sociopath. Like on the pathway to becoming a serial killer. "But how do you know he's a sociopath?" Good question. One I would have asked a mere two months ago. But when you are put face-to-face with a kid that stares into your soul with dead eyes that have no emotion as he does something you explicitly told him not to do, you just know. I'd never met a sociopath before either, but it's one of those "you don't know it till you see it" things. Like he just straight up has no emotions. He doesn't even get mad when I punish him. It's pretty creepy. The whole class I'm just thinking about how I hope to god there are no small animals in his neighborhood.