More turn-arounds

I had the worst class yet today.
The elementary class that always gives me problems. The teacher, no surprise, did not stick around. The class was the usual chaos of no-one paying attention, this time with a few new little problems thrown into the mix.

1. A group of students were making and throwing darts at eachother. They were taking feathers and thumbtacks, removing the push part of the pins, and wiring them together. Then, launching them at eachother.
2. Another group was passing notes. I doubt this is anything new. But I caught it today for the first time. AND, it was the Ryus' daughter, so it complicated matters a little more. I took the note from her, and I said "What's this?"
   She said "A note".
   I said "Oh, can I read it to the classroom then?"
   She said "It's just a math problem."
   I said "Maybe your parents could help!"
   She was quiet for the rest of class
   Excellent. Blackmail.
3. The same loud kid as every other week. Yeah, once again, he just wouldn't shut up. I can move him, and he just yells to his friends. I make him sit in the corner, he yells. I make him kneel, he writes on the wall so his friends can read it. Later, he and his friends picked up the darts making-thing too.

So, it sucked. But I finally figured out what to do. I had written the answers to the questions I had asked on the board. The answer seemed obvious. Lines. Lots of lines.
I told them to write out everything on the board into their notebooks. WHen the loud kid finished first (man, was I surprised), I said"Do it again!". I made them keep writing for almost twenty minutes.

They were quiet, they were doing english, and I was not freaking out. It was the greatest thing ever.

Eventually they asked if they could stop, and I said they could stop when their teacher got back.

What happened next explained a LOT about that class.

The teacher was 12 minutes late. I asked "Is your teacher late?", and they all replied "He is always late".

Right. That's why.

No wonder your class is full of terrors. You don't respect the rules at all either. What an idiot.

When he finally arrived, I told him everything that had happened, and showed him the pile of things that I had had to confiscate. I told him that he had to stay to help me keep his class in line from then on. Then I told the coordinator of the english program for the school, to make sure he would. He should be, anyways.

Then I had lunch. It was great. They love their pork cutlets here.

My last class was great. Complete turnaround on my day. They were good, we played charades, and they did really well! We even skipped part of the lesson (repeating after a horribly pronounced primer tape) for the game.

At the end of class, someone pulled out a camera, and they all rushed over to me for pictures, and they were hugging me and shaking my hand, and it was great. It totally erased my hate for elementary school students that the other class always seems to inspire.

Seriously, it was so great, I almost started crying just writing about it.

Then, this guy who keeps talking to me at the school invited me to tea. It turns out he is one of the senior administrators there. We had great tea. And he was really nice, although our lack of knowledge of eachothers' languages meant the conversation was not exactly riveting.

That's all for now. I'm going to eat some chips and enjoy a James Bond movie, which is currently on OCN, the number one station.