Awwww

In the West, there's a bit of a stereotype that Asian children are all quiet, obedient, and diligent workers. This is a lie. Sure, I have kids that are like that, but for every one of them, there is another kid who is loud, trouble-making, or just totally spaced out. Therefore, it is unsurprising that there are days when Teacher Rebekah runs out of patience with her classes. Recently, my co-teaching rotation through the other grades has caused me to miss some of my normal classes, and in some cases, my usual students presumed that I left because I was unhappy with them. In fact, Patty may or may not have actually told them in so many words to guilt-trip them into behaving.

My class 5-5 is usually pretty good, and has a lot of sweet and intelligent students, but recently they have been getting a little bit wild. I had to miss a session of their class last week to teach a 4th grade class, and I didn't think too much of it until the beginning of this week, when I found a little note addressed to me on Patty's desk. It was from a student in 5-5, and read as follows (with a fair amount of cross outs and whited-out bits):

Rebekah, I'm Michael! (5-5)
are you sad?

don't sad
, be happy!

Love You!

...And the o in "love" was a heart. SO CUTE. That filled my cuteness quota for the whole week, I think. In high school, Mr. Schmidt used to tell the Goonies, "As long as I have students like you, I'll never retire."* Kids like Michael are why I can go to work every day and attempt anew to wrangle hordes of adolescents into learning English without totally going crazy.


*He retired 3 years later. Apparently subsequent classes of history students were not awesome enough.