Now there’s been a lot of really crappy stuff happening recently, so I thought that everyone could use a laugh and might appreciate this little beauty...
Nothing in life is ever black or white. In teaching, it's never gray either. There's a clear colour distinction in the field of education: pink and blue.
Sometimes these colours align nicely. Seeing as my students are five years old, the majority of my time is spent making sure that both the blues and the pinks don’t pick their noses (it’s a bonus if I can stop them eating it too), that they not hit each other and don’t go running out of my classroom whenever they feel like it. Oh, and making sure they don’t hop on the elevator on the way to the bathroom (our school is on the sixth floor... it’s Korea. Tiny country + large population = high rises for everything). Sometimes we even get actual school work done.
Because of the elevator issue, we do a lot of group trips to the bathroom. Obviously, there is a strong colour distinction in this area. Pink: they must not all go into one bathroom stall together, they must flush the toilets and wash their hands. Blue: they must wash their hands and attempt to aim. But that's just scraping the surface.
Being a girl, I didn’t know that “situations” often occur with little boys in bathrooms. But they do. Frequently. Trips to the blue bathroom often involve helping each other aim and even peeing on one another. Going to the bathroom might be a group activity for girls, but nothing like that ever happens on the pink side of life.
One of these “situations” occurred this past week. Three of my blues went into the bathroom and it wasn’t long before I heard yelling. As I stepped into the washroom to see what was happening, one of my students quickly ran into a bathroom stall and the other two were standing in the middle of the bathroom doing up their pants in tears. Through the sobs I managed to decipher “He saw our gochus, but we didn’t get to see his!” When I asked if that was really a big deal, I was met with renewed tears and a lot of head nodding.
After calming the boys down, confirming that “gochu” actually did mean penis and singing my way through group circle time, I informed my Korean teacher of the problem. She said she would talk to the boys. Assuming all was well with the world, I continued my day as planned.
The next day as I was teaching my class their phonics lesson my Korean teacher came rushing into the room, a little stressed out and obviously flustered. After a lot of gesturing I finally realized that she wanted to talk about penises, so I spent a solid five minutes teaching her the word “penis” in front of a classroom full of five year olds, before I learnt that the mother of the boy who had rushed into the bathroom stall was concerned about what had happened the day before. I assured her that I would keep an eye on all the boys and not allow them to go to the bathroom together.
Since that day it has been a struggle to keep them separated, keep their hands out of their pants, and keep other parts of their bodies in them. All three boys now feel the need to expose themselves on a regular basis. My pinks have no idea what to make of this situation. Now, being made of sugar and spice myself, I had no idea what to do with this situation, so I turned to the only solution I know: stickers. You now receive stickers in my class for staying fully clothed.
So really, it all worked out in the end. There is no more nudity in my class, my kids get more stickers and my pink Korean teacher and I have both expanded our blue vocabularies. The colours are, for a little while anyway, nicely aligned. Like a two-toned rainbow of sorts.
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