Why Do I Love My Students?

Reason #1:

Sometimes I can't get the keyboard to switch between Chinese and English when I want it to.  This is annoying, and it is also somewhat embarrassing when it's in the middle of class and the document that I'm trying to type in is being projected on a screen and all of my students are looking at it.

Also, Chinese classes are notorious for sitting there and watching while problems happen.  Not getting involved is part of the culture... a part that is frustrating to foreign teachers sometimes.

However, this is a story about why I (really do) love my students.

After what was probably only a few seconds of me trying and failing to change the keyboard, my monitor for the class, Sky, jumped up.  I don't remember if I've talked about him before.  He is very enthusiastic, very friendly, very loud, and not very good at English.  Nevertheless, he's high on my list of favorite monitors.  

"I CAN HELP YOU!" he announced to me, scrambling over the students between his seat and me, and then proceeded to do exactly that.  

Problem solved.

So easy.  

I really, really appreciated the fact that he did not wait until I wanted to cry before offering to help.

Reason #2:  

Tonight the students who came over to watch a movie brought a bunch of fruit with them.  I pulled out plates and bowls so that we could pass it around and eat it, and then got to a yellow melon like thing that I wasn't sure what it was or what to do with it.

I considered just forging ahead and chopping it open, but then I decided that was dumb.  My students know me well enough to know that I have very gaping holes in my ability to deal with the(ir) world.

So I grabbed it and marched back out to the living room (well, marched may be an exaggeration, since it's only about four steps) and held up the whatever-it-was.  "WHAT IS THIS?" I asked, using my teacher voice so that they would hear and answer me.  "I don't know what to do with it!"

"It's a melon!" someone said, and probably got smacked for that answer, before the smacker concluded that they didn't know how to say it in English either.  (Probably for the good reason that it's a Chinese food....) 

"I'LL DO IT!" Ross said, taking it out of my hands and back out to the kitchen, where he proceeded to confidently chop off some of the rind, scoop out the seeds, and slice it up like a cantaloupe. 

Perfect.

Reason #3:

"You majored in Greece and philosophy, right?" Wisdom asked me before class this morning.

"Yeah," I said, because that was close enough.  

He looked pleased.  "Okay.  I'm reading about philosophy because I will come to your office, you know?"

"Um... yeah?"

"So that we can talk about it."

"Oh.  Wisdom, it's okay, we can talk about anything," I said.  Coming to talk to me in my office was one of their options to fulfill a homework requirement this semester, but I didn't really expect them to do a research project to prepare.

He gave me a Wisdom-ish look.  "A few weeks ago we had lunch together, remember?"  (Yes, I did.)  "And you really enjoyed talking about the topics of the, uh, philosophy.  So I am reading about it."

"Okay," I said, not really wanting to discourage that either.  Having conversations about the meaning of life is kind of why I was interested in getting a degree in philosophy in the first place.   "Cool.  When do you want to come to my office?"

"Oh, I don't know," he said, wandering off.  (That is also very typical for Wisdom...)  "When I finish studying about it, then I will call you.  Okay?"

"Okay."

Seriously, with students like those... who wouldn't love them?

Truth is, I feel very blessed to have the classes that I do, especially in the Non-English department.  According to my teammates, my students are more crazy than theirs... I haven't seen them, so I don't really have much to compare them with.  But I love the craziness and even the loudness (most of the time).  

[Oh, bonus story, the thing that made me laugh myself into speechlessness and tears in the middle of class today...  all the students were supposed to speak during one activity, and Web hadn't.  His English and confidence levels are both pretty high, so I'm comfortable picking on him a lot.

me:  "Web!  What group are you in??"

Web:  "Nine!"  *hand gesture for six*

me:  *very VERY confused... staring at him*

all of his classmates:  *equally confused*  "Nine?  Shi liu! [it's six!]"

me:  *cracking up*

Web:  *blushing*  "Nine!"  *hand gesture for seven*

me:  *DYING*

...so then his classmates made him practice what the hand gesture is for nine while I tried to regain my composure.]