Monday was the last day most of them were around school because it was the last official day of final exams. We had lots of students stopping in to say goodbye to the teachers who will be leaving and asking for photos.
I didn't figure out why they kept bothering me until close to the end of the day. Here I was, trying to get papers graded and they wouldn't leave me (or my co-workers) alone! Sheesh!
Then I realized that even though I would be at work for the next month and beyond, this was there last day for a while and they wanted to chat. They would scoot up to my desk with big expectant eyes and I would ask them if they had a question and they would maybe say "no" or maybe ask me some question like, "are you going back to Oregon during the break?" I'm not the brightest bulb sometimes, but once I realized they just wanted to make a last connection before they finished their first year of school, it made me feel all warm fuzzy.
Monday was also Russell's birthday, and there was only one bus running from the school since most of the other schools had already finished their finals. Even though I now realized my students wanted to chat, I explained that I had to get home to celebrate with Russell. They all got very excited and told me to wish him a happy birthday for them, which I promised I would. Then, today, one of the students showed up with a bag. She asked me if Russell like "sweets." I told her he did and she said she had some sweets for him for his birthday. She started pulling out little snack pouches of barbeque potato chips, prawn crackers, peanuts, etc. She asked me if he liked salty sweets better or sweet sweets better. I told her he like all snacks quite a lot and we discussed the finer differences between "sweets" and "snacks." She told me I had to tell Russell the snacks were from the "Japanese Jokers." I offered her some paper to write her message herself, so she set to work. The final paper says:
Happy Birthday Russell (With a smiley face and a bow)
Please eat snacks with Jaci (Heart)
I hope you have a good year with Jaci (Star)
From Japanese Jokers
I'm not 100% sure what the "Japanese Jokers" part is about. I suspect it is the result of Russell's visit to the school last Friday. He met up with this same student and at some point in the conversation she asked him how old he was and he returned the question. She accidentally told Russell she was 9 years old instead of 19 years old which got everyone laughing. She was embarrassed about the mistake, but my boss covered for her insisting that it was a "Japanese Joke" (never a mistake!) That caught on and pretty soon they were all laughing.
We have an awful lot of fun sometimes. I enjoy the students a lot.
No comments:
Post a Comment