Mama said there'd be days like this

Oy.

What a day.

Yeah I'm not gonna lie, today was tough. And when I say tough I mean like, I'm going to throw one of these kids out the window, I can't bear to sing another effing verse of this effing song, get me a strong drink now or I'm gonna ram my head through a wall kind of tough. I think this may all be partly due to the fact that today I had to teach a class of CE1 (cours elementaire un) which means that I had to teach the youngest of the young and the smallest of the small. The dreaded class of seven year olds.

Yes, let me tell you, today was tough, and I came to realize that the tortures of teaching a class full of hyperactive seven year olds is fourfold.

First of all there is the gross out factor. A classroom full of seven year olds means that there will be lots and lots of sniffling, burping, sneezing, coughing, nosebleeds, snorting, and sporadic cases of baby teeth being spat out (I wish I were kidding). There is also always the very high chance that at any given moment one of your little students will have a little finger or two firmly stuck up their nose hole. Not the most pleasant sight to behold when you are trying to be in 'professional teacher' mode. There was also that one little kid whose only English for the entire day was a perfectly pronounced "excuse me" which preceded one of the most toxic farts I have ever experienced. Torture I tell you. Torture.

Secondly, there is the singing. The endless, repetitive, TORTUOUS singing. You see that song that I posted below this paragraph? Well that was one of two activities that I managed to get through for the whole hour long class. Which means that a full half an hour was spent singing this god forsaken song. Do you have any idea how many verses of 'One, little, two little, three little children' can get sung in half an hour? Do ya'? Do ya' punk?

The third thing that drove me to the verge of insanity today was their teeny weeny little attention spans. All kicks aside, these little kiddies have the attention span of a goldfish suffering from a very advanced stage of Alzheimers disease. I am pretty sure that their brains process information in the following way:

"Ooh look there's Paul, our English teacher. Yay! English is fun. Yay! Oh look he's talking now. Wait a minute. That's not French. My tummy hurts. Hey, I sure do love Dora the Explorer! I love butterflies too! Hmm, I think I should stand up on my chair and start singing now. Ok, I should sit back down, the teacher is screaming at me. Hey, look there's a picture of a dinosaur on the blackboard! Who's that guy talking? Hey that's Paul! I'm in English class. English is fun. I wonder what Mummy's making for dinner..."

Etc., etc., etc.

Fourthly, there's the simple fact that they just have no bloody idea what I'm saying. Imagine yourself standing in front of a concrete wall and talking non-stop for one full hour. And remember that you will be talking very, very slowly. Welcome to my world.

Also, I'm trying really hard not to be immature about this, but I can't help but get the feeling that some of these kiddies are mocking me when I speak. I know that some of them, god bless their little hearts, really do have a lot of trouble repeating simple phrases. But some of them are just effing with me I swear. I hear them say perfectly pronounced sentences in English to their main teacher only to break out into dummy mode when I ask them to do something. There is this one little girl in particular, whom we shall "Lucile" to protect her true identity, who takes great delight in crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out every time I try to get her to speak in English.


Me: "Good morning. My name is Paul."

Her: "Goo baba...Me nana eeh poopoo."

Me: "My...name...is...Paul..."

Her : "Me...nana...eee...poopoo..."

During the whole thing I just kept thinking of that episode from friends where Pheobe tried to teach Joey French. Remember that one? Argh, I think that's enough complaining for one blog entry. See you guys on the flipside.