Boys have too much energy!

I have now been in Serbia for one month! Wow! Time went by so fast. The good part about the time going so fast is that I will be home before I know it. The bad part, there is so much more I need to teach the adults!

My most challenging class as far as what material to cover and classroom management is the class with the older kids. I don’t know what happened to the girls, but for the past two weeks, only 9-10 year old boys have been coming. I have no idea where they get their energy from! When we have a really small group, which is not that uncommon, they like to have class outside. I really enjoy being out in the sun so I don’t mind too much. However, being in the grass gives them every opportunity to throw things at each other, sit on each other, and wrestle. Sometimes they are even crawling on top of each other trying to get the marker to write the answer on the board – but at least they are learning! Two of the boys are really bright and pick up things really quickly. The others are usually their friends that just tag along and don’t really put forth any effort.

Yesterday, one incident really annoyed me. There was a new student – a friend of one of the boys. Instead of attempting the handout I made for him, he was writing something on a piece of paper and would cover it up whenever I walked by. I said, you don’t have to cover it up, I can’t read Slovak to which he replied “it's in English.”

I eventually saw that the boy was writing “He is gay -->” in bubble letters. The note was attended for his friend behind him. I took the paper from him and said do you know what gay means. He said yes. I said is this something nice to joke about? He said no. Then, I ripped the note up in front of the kids and said if you want to write stupid things stay at home. The kid couldn’t identify a simple past tense verb yet he can write comments like that in English.

This bothered me for two reasons. First, I’m actually trying to teach these kids something. I didn’t fly halfway around the world to babysit them after school. Second, why has calling someone gay become an insult? I believe in love. If you love someone, you should be together. Isn’t it a shame how society will turn a blind eye to a young woman marrying an old man for his money yet they won’t accept it when two men or two women that truly love each other want to be together? Doesn’t make much sense to me.