Bizarre Teaching Moment #4: Pieces of Eight!

~Living in Japan is not, unfortunately, all fun and games. This teaching gig is hard work! Without a doubt, my most difficult class consists of six five-year old "spider monkeys" for 45 minutes every Saturday. They mostly ignore me in favor of punching each other and find it amusing to run out of the room and rampage around the school as soon as my back is turned. For any of you who believe that Asian children are somehow better behaved than American kids (I'm looking at you, Grandpa!), allow me to dispel this myth for you. Take it from me, they lack discipline!

They've been a bit better lately because I've been super-strict, but one student remains a particularly difficult case outside of the class. This is because he's always hanging around the school; his sister (another one of my students) takes several classes a week, and he always tags along and wanders up and down the hallway. He's seemingly quite fond of me and always barges into my room, babbling in Japanese.

However, I discovered an amusing fact today: he will automatically mimic anything I say. Whenever I tell him to be quiet, he says "Be quiet!" to me, and when I say "Stop it!" he repeats it right back to me. Finally, exasperated with this behavior, I looked at him and said, "Pieces of Eight!"

Naturally, he squawked it right back to me (several times, in fact). I've dubbed him "Parrot", which will be his nickname from now on; by the way, the Japanese word for parrot is 'oumu' (katakana = オウム ). During the next class, I'll 'teach' him to say, "Polly Wanna Cracker?" and "Bond! Bond!"

Ah, the joy of corrupting, I mean teaching, young minds! ~Oyasumi!