In the front row

No one had to tell me this was the new kid. She was the only fifth grader with two colors in her hair. Her homeroom teacher sat her in the front row with no student on her right or left. The nearest kid to her was Anthony who sat right behind here.

I have known Anthony for three years now. He had always been very kind to me and looked forward to the times we had to study English together. Most kids eagerly await the time the native speaking English teacher comes to the classroom and this is the way it usually was. Anthony was especially nice and enthusiastic in class as he had become good friends with my own son who is in the fifth grade. I kind of counted on him to keep the class motivated and have a positive attitude and he did for one semester. When his friends were quiet and no one answered he would always say something good and try to speak English.

Everything changed the day the new kid came. Her name is Jenny and she just transferred from Macao to our school in Seoul. Just first impressions was that she was at least one year older than the other students and maybe her parents had held her back for reasons. Unlike other kids she has no problem speaking English fluently. Her first words when she met me were,

" 'Sup Teach? "

I only visit her classroom once every two weeks due to Corona and online classes, so today is actually only the second time I saw her in my life. As I looked at the attendance list and I noticed that she had no Korean name.

I asked her where she was from and she answered,

I'm from Korea.

Then I told her I never had a student understand and speak English like she does without studying abroad. I asked her where she learned it. She said,

I learned to speak English mostly in Hong Kong.

You would think that Jenny would at least show off her English on the test, but when the test came around the Korean teacher was shocked at Jenny's scores.

Jenny's English Test

She had only 7% correct on her English test. I wondered if it was because of the Instructions were written in Korean. Some kids who come from foreign countries can't speak Korean but here that wasn't the case. There were some easy matching questions in English like:

went ------ a hamburger
rode ------ to the zoo
ate ------- a bike

She didn't even bother answering the easy matching questions. Instead she just put a big question mark on the whole page. Then on the second page with the difficult reading passages and writing she got the most difficult problem correct. She then drew a smiley face with it's tongue sticking out.

:-)~

In Korea tests are considered very important but for her they are a game.

Everything is a game to her but the game

The boys around her became a game to her also. She has them wrapped around her little finger. They do anything they can to impress her. Anthony started swiping other student's stuff when they were not looking. Then he would show it off just to hear her laugh.

The boy across from Anthony was just as bad. He was laughing unreasonably hard and every chance he got he would try to make a stupid joke in Korean. They think they are mature because they can goof off but they don't realize that they have become her slaves.

Like I said today was only the second time I saw Jenny in my life but she came on stronger than ever. I opened up the class with, "What did you do yesterday?" Then she answered,

"I ate my pooh."

We were only two minutes into class and she had already started. I just ignored her but I could not ignore the strange behavior of the class around her. Then ten minutes later she said,

May I use the restroom?"

I resisted saying something sarcastic back to her and answered, "certainly." OK, I admit I wanted her to leave the room. And when she was gone things got back to normal pretty quick. It was obvious that somehow she was ruling over this class. Ten minutes later she came back. I avoided saying anything to her or bringing up her pooh statement from a few minutes ago. I just went on with class.

The other students made a cartoon and played a word game. The other classes I used this game with all laughed and had a good time, but this class was mostly quiet. Jenny just kept her head down until class was finished.

Can the homeroom teacher help?

As a subject teacher seeing this kids just 40 minutes every other week there is not a lot I can do. Usually I can talk to the homeroom teacher but this homeroom teacher is also difficult to communicate with because of her serious obsessive compulsive disorder.

In her class she has one small whiteboard in the middle of her green chalkboard. The rest of the chalk board is filled with memos and papers and things she has ordered. The white board she uses to write things is all scratched and worn out. The kids can't see anything she writes there.

One day in class I moved the white board and wrote one word on the chalk board behind it. The kids could see it well and follow the letters. I erased the word and put the white board back after class, but she still had a fit. Her students came to me after school and told me what happened. They said that their teacher had a fit because I used the chalk board. She has no idea that her students told me. I have nothing against her, but I can see how the students are about to explode in her class.

Usually the homeroom teacher can work on these things with me, but she is the most difficult homeroom teacher to communicate with among the more than thirty homerooms I visit every week or two.

Just ride it out like Inside Out

If I talk to the homeroom teacher she may feel like I am pressuring her or don't accept her professionalism as a teacher. I've got to be really careful about how I deal with things like this. From experience the best thing to do is let it ride out.

Probably Jenny is just another girl going through adolescents and needs some time to figure things out. At least she has sense to go to the bathroom whenever she thinks she is full of pooh.

^{This is a true story but some of the names and places were changed to protect the "innocent"... well to protect me at least.}

^{Cover picture source at Pixabay
Inside out Picture source at D23}