For those of you sitting in the very back row here, I am an ESL teacher at a
community center in
Chicago. I work with a gaggle of interesting, intelligent, and hilarious adults from a gazillion different countries and cultures. My job rules, bigtime. Today was the last day of class, which basically means that I ate way too much food and got about a bajillion cards with cats on the covers that say amazing things like, 'Teacher, thanks you for your patient x 10,000 (multiplication) you teaching me good i love you Meow!, Veronica.' I also got a copy
Barry Manilow's 'In the Swing of Christmas' from an elderly Korean student who won it at a Korean senior's holiday party last week and had no use for it.
I insisted upon getting some class photos earlier in the week. The awk thing about being the teacher is that A) my students demand that I take front & center in all of the photos and B) I'm considerably taller than most of the folks in the class. This all leads to uncomfortable crouching and bending over and bruised knees and tons of weird group shots. I thought the above picture was, at least, reasonably attractive.
Anyway, all of this is a roundabout way of saying that I love my students. And that I am lucky to know them.
6 comments:
oh, I was so glad to read this! and I love that you're an ESL teacher! when I was in undergrad I worked in a bilingual classroom with America Reads for 4 years, and even though it was ueber stressful, I really loved, loved, loved those kids (and miss them : / )...hahahaha and I LOVE the description of the cards they gave you! awwww, and the presents...so adorable!
I would get the most random crap for the holidays from the kids' parents, like the weirdest shit from the streets of Chinatown (and the kids would always try to get me to eat their seaweed candy, which was DISGUSTING)...
oh, all this love makes me remember why I love teaching : )
I love that you wear tucked-in plaid shirts when teaching.
cute! they are lucky to have you!
Megan- YES. Teaching is the bomb. It's also exhausting and emotionally really, really hard. But, god, I go to work everyday and just laugh and laugh and laugh with them. They rule, so hard.
Chris- DERRR I WEAR PLAID TO WORK! F YEAH. Did you think I had some kind of other secret, professional wardrobe. HECK NO. I look like this every single day of my life.
Kate- THANKS!
that's totally the best part...I wanted to stab my eyes out every day of those 4 years, b/c of how stressful it was, but I loved eating lunch with my favorite little 8-yr-olds and laughing with them abt Hannah Montana and other crap...ohhhh, kiddies...
That sounds really, really great. It's a good job.
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