New Students

After five days off from teaching English Kindergarten, I now have ten new students as the teacher of Chicago class. My students are all Korean age 6, which means they are all really just 5 years old. Some of the students come from the Korean Kindergarten at my school, so they know a little bit of English already, but three students had never gone to school before and didn't even have English names. Now, one lucky girl in my class will forever be known as "Rapunzel".

Because the kids know so little English, our "lessons" are extremely simple. Most of them don't even know the alphabet. Today we learned how to write the letter "A" and colored in a picture of an apple. I had to write the students' names and the date on their papers with a highlighter so that they could trace them. I thought things were pretty basic in the last few months with Duke Class, but even those kids seemed years ahead of my Chicago class.

The students are not allowed to leave the room by themselves since they may get lost and not be able to find the classroom. So we go to the bathroom as a class. If one student needs to go, we all go. This makes for many trips to the bathroom. Which is fine with me...we spend a good chunk of the morning lining up and waiting in the hallway. I figured since the kids were so young, I'd have a lot of trouble getting them to behave. Luckily, nine of the ten students are really well behaved. But the tenth student, Jack, is an absolute terror. Some of the other teachers here call him "the spawn of the devil". I taught Jack in Korean Kindergarten last month, so I knew I was going to have my hands full with him, but oh my god. In 2 days, Jack has already flung a spoonful of rice porridge across the room, stood on a desk and pulled down his pants, and eaten Vaseline. At least he's keeping things interesting.

On another note, it's been exactly one year since I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. I look at where I was at with my health one year ago, and it's kind of shocking how much my life has changed. If developing Celiac disease was the worst thing to ever happen to me, then being diagnosed and beginning a gluten-free diet was without a doubt the best thing. One year later, I have regained almost all of the weight that I initially lost, and although it’s still a nuisance, I very rarely get sick from gluten. Which is nice.