Kiddies
The past week and a half has been a blur. I’ve been busy at my school’s English camp in the boonies. Teaching middle school kids. It was rough the first few days, but I’ve gotten used to the early schedule and the kids. In fact, I’m actually starting to get kind of attached to them.
We had Mini Olympics last weekend, which consisted of team games that pitted the different homeroom classes against each other. Our class was in the Finals for Bodyguard Dodgeball, a variant of the original, the difference being that each team is composed of pairs of players, one person to act as defender while the other player basically avoids getting hit. Of course we paired them boy-girl boy-girl, with the girls holding onto the boys’ waist from behind. Gotta love having fun with their adolescent awkwardness. ^0^
It got kind of brutal though, especially with the older kids. They were whipping the ball as hard as they could. You’d see guys getting their balls blasted and people getting it in the face. So the Gamemaster announced that a facial hit would disqualify a pair. But just moments later, my sweet and demure 12-year-old made a purely inelastic facial collision with the game ball. I mean, she got walloped. I went over and asked her if she was okay. She kind of rubbed her eye and nodded. I felt relieved and walked her over to the sideline to sit out. Then like 10 seconds later, she just burst into tears and started bawling. I was like, WTF? And she just kept on crying for almost 10 minutes straight.
I really felt the teacher in me. I felt really bad. I even felt like crying, just because she was. And I was mad at that kid who hit her. Dumbass, the ref just said not to throw at people’s faces. I couldn’t really do anything though, but sit with her and rub her back.
Sigh...I’m really starting to get attached to my kids.
We had Mini Olympics last weekend, which consisted of team games that pitted the different homeroom classes against each other. Our class was in the Finals for Bodyguard Dodgeball, a variant of the original, the difference being that each team is composed of pairs of players, one person to act as defender while the other player basically avoids getting hit. Of course we paired them boy-girl boy-girl, with the girls holding onto the boys’ waist from behind. Gotta love having fun with their adolescent awkwardness. ^0^
It got kind of brutal though, especially with the older kids. They were whipping the ball as hard as they could. You’d see guys getting their balls blasted and people getting it in the face. So the Gamemaster announced that a facial hit would disqualify a pair. But just moments later, my sweet and demure 12-year-old made a purely inelastic facial collision with the game ball. I mean, she got walloped. I went over and asked her if she was okay. She kind of rubbed her eye and nodded. I felt relieved and walked her over to the sideline to sit out. Then like 10 seconds later, she just burst into tears and started bawling. I was like, WTF? And she just kept on crying for almost 10 minutes straight.
I really felt the teacher in me. I felt really bad. I even felt like crying, just because she was. And I was mad at that kid who hit her. Dumbass, the ref just said not to throw at people’s faces. I couldn’t really do anything though, but sit with her and rub her back.
Sigh...I’m really starting to get attached to my kids.
