Punched

In my time teaching Chinese kindergartners, I’ve had my fair share of bruises, scratches, arm/leg pulls, stretched shirts, spit/sneezes/coughs in my face. However, today was the first time I got knocked in the face by a kid’s head.

I have a few deaf students (yeah, teaching deaf students in a foreign language how to speak a foreign language) since my kindergarten has a special program. They all have hearing aids so the program is designed to teach them to speak with the correct pronunciation. The deaf students have a reputation for being especially spoiled because everyone tends to take pity on them and give them their way most of the time. In one of my classes, there is a student who seems more spoiled than others and is intent on getting what he wants or he throws a tantrum. He also thinks that everything he does is funny and this totally disrupts the class when he suddenly decides to pull his chair up to sit directly in front of the whiteboard in line of everyone’s line of sight. Annoying.

We were doing bookwork today and he wanted a black crayon. Since there were no black crayons available, he took his book and started erasing the whiteboard work with it. I wanted the students to follow the example on the whiteboard, so I took his book away to make him stop. I placed the book back at his seat but he only grabbed it again to repeat. I take the book away again and this time hold it up higher so that I could put it in a place he couldn’t reach. Out of the corner of my eyes I see him crouching low to the ground when all of a sudden he jumps up and the top of his head connected with my mouth.

What. the. heck?! He looks up at me and as he rubs his head in pain his eyes accuse me of hurting him. Seriously kid? You’re the genius who decided to run your head into my mouth. I put my finger to my lips because I can feel it beginning to swell and there was some blood on my finger. I wasn’t sure whether it was coming from my lips or my teeth so I asked another student whether my lips or my teeth were “red.” Her eyes widened and she just nodded and so she was no help. All my teeth were still in place so I figured there was no permanent harm done. But I was mad at that kid!

The cutest thing was that another student heard from my TA that I had gotten hurt. He came up to ask me about it and I said that the other student had “hit” me and mimed it out to him using my fist to tap his mouth. He pulled my hand to lead me and told me, “I will show you who it is.” I think that he probably thought that I couldn’t understand his Mandarin and didn’t know their Chinese names (I don’t know their Chinese names actually ... only their English names). He pointed at the deaf student and I nodded “yes.” And then he told me that he would make sure to tell their Chinese teacher so that he could get in trouble. His sudden concern in my well-being was so cute. Besides the workplace hazards, it really touches me when my students share with me their love. It makes me feel like I’m actually making a difference in their lives.

Moral of the story: wear protective gear when teaching English to Chinese kindergartners.