Tuesday, October 9, 2007

The Milk Yak

There's this kid at the kindergarten. He's impossible to deal with. He roams. He climbs on stuff. He doesn't know he's being bad--he's too young. I have never seen a child so completely reject the pressure to conform, and to obey adults.

Reasoning won't work with him, neither will yelling. The teacher can physically restrain him, as she does when the children pray to Buddha after class, but as soon as she lets go, he's off roaming again. She has about 30 other kids to look after while this is going on.

How do you deal with a kid like this? Obviously you can't be physically violent, yelling doesn't work, and you have a ton of other little munchkins to look after. It is impossible. He does what he wants.

Today, the teacher in charge of these rugrats was looking broken in her pink Miffy apron. Her eyes were blank flecks of gray slate. I theorize it's solely because of this child.

And today, when she looked about the lowest I've seen her, he struck. We were playing a game, and I turned just in time to see this little man stop his roaming and stand there impassively spewing milk-vomit from his expressionless mouth. And then he started running around again, as if nothing happened, while his teacher mopped it up.

Teaching can be a cruel job sometimes.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just think: you and your fellow teacher are the best thing this kid's parents have in their life. Imagine how you would think about the weekends if you were in their getas (OMB, honey, we have some unstructured time with the milk yak. Sign him up for ballroom dancing, quick!)

Nate said...

It's true. Sometimes parents drop their kids off an hour early at school and pick them up an hour late.

Do you think that's so they can learn more English? Hell no!

Unknown said...

What is the age range of the kids in the class?

Nate said...

They're in Kindergarten, so I think about 5-6...young...

Anonymous said...

Here in the good ole US of A, we'd likely label this kid ADHD -- Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder and treat him with some mind-numbing drugs..........you can see why the Docs and parents would go along with this???? He's probably the next Picasso or Jackson Pollack (think milk spatters!) in the making........hang in there....you are doing what all really good teachers do, which is try and figure out what makes this kid tick and how you can help him without losing the other kids in the process.

Nate said...

I mean, he just needs his own dedicated handler, but the school doesn't have the resources. I bet his teacher would love for him to get pumped full of mind-numbing drugs.

It sucks when the system isn't designed to flex much. There's nothing wrong with this kid--he's one of the smarter kids--he just doesn't fit into the system.