Posted by Anonymous on 2015/01/28 under Uncategorized You don’t know who we are, you dont know what we do when we get home and away from your school. You don’t know our lives, our troubles, our cares, and if you got a glimpse you’d be horrified. You have to remember, you never experienced the real world and all its cruelties, you never really left school. You had the privelege of a higher education. Something many of our parents, and their parents never had. You act like you know it all, like you’ve been there. You think we act out because we’re naughty, in with a bad crowd, or just dont want to learn. You don’t understand what the frustration of living in a seriously disfunctional family does to a young person. You may have read about it in a text book, but unless you’ve actually experienced it, you have no clue. Some of you try to be our friends, listen to our music, be “one of us” and we tolerate you, we do that because at least you are trying, but really, it is just sad. If you were just honest with us…we would respect you more. Most of you have forgotten how confusing it is to be a young person. You want us to be mature, but at the same time, everyone wants “kids to be kids”. What do you want? You can’t have it both ways. Lectures are going to get you nowhere. Growing up is like learning to walk, we are going to fall flat on our faces a few times, we’ll get bruised, and we’ll cry when we fail. It is not your job to stop the hurts of learning these new skills, it is your job to help us figure out what to do NEXT time. If you wrap us in cotton wool and dont let us learn things for ourselves, how are we going to function in the adult world? You know that homework we never do? After spending six hours in school, doing chores, doing any assignments we might have, the extra curricular activities our parents make us do, having dinner, maybe socialising with the family a little, we barely have time to ourselves, to relax and so something we actually WANT to do…there’s no real time for homework…let us kids be KIDS…and if you happen to be teaching high school, keep in mind we may have 5 OTHER classes that day, and teachers may have assigned us homework too. Homework is a practice that leads to bad work practices in the future. Most professions do not expect you to take work home with you at the end of the day to complete, do they? Didn’t think so. Do your job, teach us to be functional adults, dont stress us out with un-needed work. Spare a thought when you can for the gifted kid amongst us. Even if you assume they’ve got it and are inclined to go help the less adept, sometimes they struggle too, and just a little “you okay with this” can go a long way in making sure the gifted one is not put under pressure to perform when they are not sure what they are supposed to be doing. Dont be afraid to pair less talented students with more talented ones, sometimes a kid can explain things to their peers better than you could. Teaching someone else also helps new skills be remembered. Utilise this! Above all else, dont try to fix us, what you percieve as “broken” may be beautifully artistic, or useful in another person’s eyes. Don’t get mad at us if you ask a question like “why didn’t you do your homework” and you get a response you were completely not expecting…even if it upsets you. It is likely we are upset to when that happens. (I literally had a teacher say “HOW DARE YOU TELL ME THIS” when something traumatic happened to me, It made the whole situation so much worse). If a student is upset over something you think is trivial, please, above all else, DO NOT TRIVIALISE it. Just because you think someone’s mouse dying is nothing, that doesnt mean they didn’t care for that mouse like it was a brother, sister or child. The smallest things can mean so much to someone, and someone else, especially someone in a position of power and respect trivialising it can completely shatter a person, even more so when we are young. I guess what I am trying to say is, go about your work of educating, but do so kindly, with respect and understanding, but don’t be false. Just be human, and treat us like fellow humans too.
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Its posts like this that make us love ourselves more and find ourselves very funny.
We study in school, get punished, play during recess, play + finish homework before dinner and study at night, graduate magically and get a great job without whining about teachers needing to be kind and understanding. (And ours are most certainly not Kind and understanding. No teacher would ever freaking ask you whether you finished your homework or not hahaha just whoever didnt hand it in, stand for like 3 hours outside, no problem hahaha or you can get the cane and sit there with your pulsing palms thorughout the class before you can go wash itwith some cold water hahaha)
If we were rude, we get punished. If we were late, we get punished. And instead of sitting there complaining and whining about it, we still enjoy everyday of our kiddy lives. When we look back, we laugh about it because we got through it not cry about our lost childhood or what not.
Maybe because to us we’re in a harsher situation where really if a mouse died its a yay for us because it wouldnt be stealing our food at night from a fridge that doesnt exist in our wooden house. Maybe because our parents had to work all day in the fields just to get us to school thats why we appreciate it more and sit there getting caned and scolded and still study hard without wanting kindness or consideration or what not.
We don’t know. haha maybe we just dont think very much about ourselves.
Asians