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