ENGLISH STORY TIME The Time My Students Thought I Told Them To Shut Up What Did I Say

hey hey guess what it’s

story time hey i said a story

time all right i am teacher tiffany and

today i’m going to tell you a

story about when i was teaching english

in south korea

now i love children

i really love children so when i was

working in korea

i had the opportunity to work with kids

in the afternoon

now at that time i spoke a little korean

but i wasn’t fluent just yet so my boss

came to me and said tiffany we have a

class

of about maybe 15 or 20 kids

and they were around six seven and eight

years old

but at that time they didn’t have a

korean teacher

who could teach the class so they said

tiff would you mind do you think it

would be possible for you to handle the

class

for about 45 minutes every day without a

korean teacher in the classroom

now again i told you i have always loved

children children are usually drawn to

me

so i said of course no worries at all

i’ll

take the class and i figured how hard

could it be

five six seven eight year olds and you

know i knew a little bit of korean

so anyways the day came my first day of

class i walked in

and when i say those little people oh

they were so cute they were so cute it

was half boys and half girls so it was

split down the middle

they were so adorable so class started i

introduced

myself they were smiling of course they

were a little curious

they had never seen me before so we went

through the first day of class

no problem at all so i saw them every

day

monday tuesday wednesday and thursday oh

excuse me four days a week right

so i taught them every day and we went

to the first week

no problems second week no problems

but you know as they started getting

used to me

you know how kids are they started to

test

the waters in the beginning they were

all extremely good but

toward the third week some of the little

boys started playing a little bit more

in class

they weren’t listening when i gave them

instructions and the little girls

started talking to their friends so

i had to be a little bit more of a

disciplinarian

i had to make rules for the classroom if

they did talk when they weren’t supposed

to they had to get in trouble

so one day i think on this day i had had

a bad day it was a long day

my morning classes didn’t go well and i

walked into the classroom

and the kids were kind of talking a lot

so i said

hey guys need everyone to please sit

down and open your books

now they didn’t speak english fluently

but they

understood enough english to know

exactly what i was asking them to do

no one moved no one

did what i asked them they just kept

talking so i said again

hey guys i need you all to please sit in

your seats

and open your books so we can start

class

again everyone ignored me and continued

doing what they were doing

so i was getting a little bit irritated

and i i did shout i said everybody

shut your mouth open your books and sit

down now

again about 20 kids five six seven and

eight years old so

it was a little bit hard to control them

at times but i said

shut your mouth and sit down and then

everyone got silent

everyone and one little girl

now again i didn’t speak korean fluently

but i knew enough

one little girl leaned over to her

friend

and in korean said the teacher

just told us to shut up

and when she said it caught me off guard

i said i did not say shut up

i said shut your mouth and they looked

at me like

what’s the difference and i was trying

not to chuckle

i was trying not to laugh because i know

for a kid again

shut up is too strong to say to children

and in the classroom environment and i

would have never said that

but when she leaned over to her friend

and the look on her face

the teacher just told us to shut up

i i chuckled inside and then i was a

little bit worried i don’t want the

parents to think that i’m telling their

children to shut up

so i had to explain to them the

difference between shut your mouth

and shut up and as i explained it i said

yes guys

shut your mouth does mean close your

mouth and be quiet

but it’s not rude it’s kind of like

their facial expressions went from

to uh okay

teacher and again inside i was laughing

because

the little people’s faces they were so

cute so again i explained i said guys

you have to listen when the teacher is

asking you to do something

you can’t just ignore your teacher and

some parts of the conversation i said in

korean because i wanted them to

understand immediately

but after that they all started

listening they opened their books and we

continued with the class

but i never forgot that day the day

that children thought i told them their

english teacher

to shut up and i did not do that so

it was a very funny day again i laughed

inside

again i loved the kids they loved me we

had a wonderful time together

it was kind of sad when i had to stop

being their teacher because the next

semester we changed

teachers but i really enjoyed them they

were so cute

so that was the day that the kids

thought their english teacher

told them to shut up now i hope you

enjoyed today’s

story time thanks so much for joining

i’ll see you

in the next lesson