Wonderful

Today I feel better. I had 6 periods of teaching. Given it's Ramadhan, that's a challenge. Especially when you do all the talking.hehe

Today in Form 2 class, I was teaching grammar. The same boy gave me headache. He was noisy, playful to the extend of annoyance, and well, rude. This time my approach was to ignore. I've been told that he likes attention. So I thought, I'm not giving any to him. Plus, this boy has good command of English. I needed to focus on weaker students.

I was explaining about Simple Future Tense. I had to explain 3 times because a few students still couldnt get between 'will' and 'going to'. Mind you, I had an annoying boy, trying to get all my attention, making noise as much as he could and matching his noise level with my voice. Then I heard many vulgar words, and the Fuck, bitch, and anything you could imagine.

This time I stopped explaining. I felt challenged. and the fact that he used those words, in my class, in front of other students, I had to do something. He crossed the line. Too many lines in fact. So I glared at him. And as usual, he wanted a glaring contest.

I uttered word by word.

"V, if you dont want to be in my class, I dont mind. You can always go out. You can always leave my class."

*paused*

"You can leave my class, NOW!!"

I had enough. So arrogantly, he walked right in front of me, with the attitude, and stood outside.Then I continued,

"I dont care whether you want to learn or not. You are blessed because you speak English at home. Some of your friends here, DON'T! So respect them because they want to learn!"

So I continued teaching. Bla bla bla bla until 2 periods were gone. When I stepped out of the class, I heard 'teacher, teacher'. I turned around. It's the boy, being pushed by his 2 friends.

"Teacher, V wants to say something"

I waited. 'What?"

"He wants to say sorry teacher"

Hmm.. No, I couldnt hear anything.

Then the boy exasperately'Teacher, I'm not used to this. This is hard" he said apologetically.

"Write to me then. I want a love letter"

Excitedly he said 'alrite teacher, done. Tomorrow I give it to you"

Then I walked away.

For a teacher, at least for me, although the boy did not apologize with words, his apologetic look was enough. It made the whole things different. This boy had been calling me names but when he did what he did, all my anger went away. Magic huh?