It was student review and reflection time again this week – one of my least favourite times of the term – where pupils reflect on their progress, fill in a form, and then take it home for their parents to sign. I don’t like it because, in my experience, young children are incapable of reflecting on their strengths and weaknesses and simply parrot what I’ve been telling them all year. So I could just tell their parents directly, and cut out all the tedious form-filling admin.
Anyway, I was reading through the comments my pupils had written, and was rather alarmed to see this one –
The parents will think I’m running a den of vice, where I fleece the kids of their pocket money every week. I wondered whether to add: this is an educational game suggested to me by the deputy head, but I don’t want to sound as though I’m desperately trying to justify myself, so I haven’t.
To make matters worse, the parents probably won’t know that Kahoot is an online learning game, so they’ll assume that their child and I are in cahoots to hide my kindi-casino, but the child can’t spell.
Oh, well … on a brighter note, I have a new Best Friend this week. Phoebe, aged four, has joined my class, and I knew we’d clicked straightaway when she invited me to go home with her and have a bath.
It’s certainly one of the strangest invitations I’ve ever had, and am still considering whether or not to accept. I’m hoping there was no hidden agenda – I did a bit of surreptitious armpit sniffing – but I don’t think four-year-olds are that subtle.
In fact, I know that four-year-olds are not that subtle, thanks to an ego-crushing conversation I had yesterday:
Child 1: Teacher, why you got hair like boy?
Me: It’s not really like a boy’s, is it? It’s just short.
Child 2: Teacher, why you got messy hair. Did you forget to comb it?
Me: It’s not messy – I just don’t have Chinese hair, that’s all.
Child 1: It’s ugly hair.
Me: Oh, dear.
Child 3: Teacher, why your neck like that?
Me: Why is my neck like what?
Child 3: It looks like it’s been mashed.
I have decided that my next job will be in the Arctic Circle, and no one will ever see my ugly hair and mashed neck again.
