When Laowais Attack
A fairly painful looking injury happened in a class this morning. To drum the requisite 6/8 new items of vocabulary into little kids, I often play a TPR (Total Physical Response) game to finish with. It involves sellotaping flashcards (have a word with yourself) which is teaching-speak for A4 sheets bearing large, colourful pictures, at various points around the room. Oh, little jokes along the way - where to stick this one? Maybe on your head a ha ha, or no, I’ll stick it on the window. What, why is it not sticking? O bless me the window is in fact open and I had not noticed the fact that this window is open as I am such a clumsy feckless laowai. Brings the class down that one.
8 pictures of Zoo Animals scattered around the room then. The class is divided into 3 teams, 1 representative from each is called to the front of the class, each competitior roughly equal in terms of their academic ability and physique. The object of the game is for me to mention one of the ‘new words’, and for the students to correlate the sound signifier with the picture signified, and be the first to touch the picture, which will gain a point for their team, of which I keep a log on the board. It tends to become ultra competitive; I say the word, gesture in an often erroneous direction to put them off, while the barely contained exuberance of their classmates spills over and they stand up, yell and point to what they think is the correct answer, which further excites the active players who jostle and shove eachother as they go for the point. Obviously you cannot match up a confident 13 year old boy fresh off the basketball court with an almost mute five year old girl. A mismatch was not the cause of this incident. I had picked 3 similarly aged and intelligent boys and set them off for Zebra. They looked around, could not think of the answer for themselves, there was no help forthcoming from their classmates nor could they gauge that any of the other competitiors had a clue, so they began randomly circling out of hope, lion - no, elephant - no, tiger - no. Then a lightbulb moment as a non-participating student jumped to her feet and pointed to Zebra. I was myself unsure where it was as I had not called it yet. It was slightly hidden behind a first grade girl, who was wearing the oblivious, glassy expression that seems to pop up on their faces intermittenly between intense bouts of excitement. I recognised the potential car-crash moment and everything seemed to flip to melodramatic stop - motion (nooooo….). A classroom length away, they began to jostle one another for momentum, and then perhaps a metre away they started to slip on the glossy cement surface, and as the girl regained awareness for the briefest of moments, a single straggle of struggling arms and legs collided full-on with her. An up-turned chair was behind, one of its legs threatening to impale her, but ‘fortunately’ she was only bounced into the central mass of desk, chair and wall behind her. As she was led wailingly from the room by a bemused Chinese teacher, I wore the ‘Frowny’ mask and took the pictures down, to move onto something a little duller but safer from the threat of decapitating 5 year olds.
I should have guessed. A few weeks before I had played the same game with a diffent class. For interest and variety I had placed a picture (kangaroo, if you’re interested) outside the room. As three of them ran outside to touch the picture taped to the wall, the bounce back of momentum from hitting the wall sent one girl reeling, and unfortunately her stagger sent her tumbling down a flight of steps from where she was taken to the staffroom bawling and gripping her left arm.
With slightly older kids I used a darts board game. When it was an individuals turn to throw, I would mock-pretend to throw it at them, and instead loop it high yet safely into the air where it would strike the ground to a chorus of waaaa!. This time though, the student in question was busy talking and had not noticed; in conjunction, the dart had left my hand too early, and had too much horizontal and not enough vertical - instead of a gentle parabola it was winging its way directly towards his face. I had instant ’slasher’ visions of him recoiling with the dart lodged in his eye, wailing grievously. The class had similar notions, and their gasps had alerted the endangered 4th grader who rather unfortunately started turning his head toward me and the oncoming dart. The point lodged and hung in his temple for a frozen half-second, an inch left of his eye, and dropped to the floor. A bead of blood emerged and trailed slowly down the side of his head, as thankfully he started smiling and the class broke out into a nervous laugh, presumably not to further offend the wrathful dart-throwing baboon.
I tipped an unsuspecting junior child out of a first floor window to fetch a ball that I had accidentally thrown out. The Chinese number their floors in the American way, so of course that was only the ground floor, but its a good anecdote without that qualifier. Eva’s crime list comprises of hanging off children by their ankles from 3rd floor balconies, in full view of his following class waiting below. He has also admitted to rugby-tackling one offensive child who stole his bag through a hedge. I have not attempted this was any naughty five year olds as of yet.
The discussion of what our response would be to inflicting grave or even fatal harm to a student was a common conversation topic between myself and Eva, and was not as whimsical as you would imagine. Could we get home from the school, pack up the necessaries, get on a train out of the province and secure a flight home from somewhere as laowai heavy and backdoor as Shanghai, before the inefficient net of Chinese bureaucracy closed in on us?
I would have had to deal with this conundrum had the following event transpired. It seems as though half of my school semester was sent throwing children into the air or swinging them around. Amazingly, no injuries were administered during these activities, save some sore upper arms, flanks or ankles where it was necessary for me to grip. One of these occasions was almost fatal. As I was leaving, I was asked a further time by a girl holding her hands in the air bao yi (or some such - means lift me / hug me, normally addressed to a parental figure from a child), so I grabbed her sides, braced myself, and then a moment of miraculous providence. I realised that I was standing in the doorway, and had I thrown her, the top of her head would have met the door frame with full force, a painful looking metal jut.
Even the reputation of the roundeye teacher can be dangerous. In a run - down school just out of the city where I do a few guest - spot lessons, a young student apparently suffered an excitable fit in the communal toilets, slipped in her frenzy and knocked herself out on the sink. She was taken to the local hospital.
My only instance of psychological bullying occured when a normally decent student was acting purposefully scatty and refusing to listen. I held up a picture of an ugly red-necked American with a crossword puzzle smile and an immense mullet, and told the class it was her boyfriend (naan - pengyou). As they broke out into jeers her face pitifully and sourly curled and she unwillingly began to sob.
My Spanish friend Si-Jiao ws only stopped from choking an insolent Junior student through the intervention of the supervising teacher.
The naughtiest kid out of any of my classes was behaving as normal, yelling at the front of the class to me in incomprehensible though obviously deragotory Chinese while the startlingly ineffective supervising teacher looked on. In a rare show of lost patience, I leaned over and strongly wrenched his nipple, causing him to scurry to the back of the class and tearily whimper to his indulgent Chinese teacher about the big bad whitey. This is the one act that I truly don’t regret.
August 3rd, 2005 at 4:26 pm
Nothing worng with nipple tweaking, good job.
On big brother, a bird has just hit new BB lows. She put a wine bottle up her chuff.
August 6th, 2005 at 1:50 am
Okay Jon, two things…
Firstly, I didn’t hold the kid by his ankles, I held his feet in one hand and his hands in another.
Secondly, it was the second floor balcony, not the third… but the next class was waiting directly below