Why I Teach: Cindy

Today I was reminded exactly why I am teaching in the first place: for the beautiful beings that are children. For their minds. For their futures.

This is how it happened:

My morning was rough, my mind filled with a whole boatload of things I had to get done before I go to Jeju tomorrow for an ultimate frisbee tournament. I also had all my lowest level classes today, for six hours straight.

In my fourth class, grade 2 (elementary school), one of my hardest classes to control, a girl named Cindy came up to me sheepishly and quietly said, in Korean, "teacher today I couldn't do my homework." And I was overwhelmed with other stuff so I kind of ignored her. And then as class started, I began checking the students homework as I always do for the first five minutes of class. When I got to little Cindy I said ok Cindy no homework. You see, this student has never done homework in class. She's a sweet girl and she works hard in class, but for almost a month and half she hasn't done a single page of homework. And as I move to the next student I suddenly realize Cindy is crying. Not a little, but a lot, these great big gulping sobs, and everything stops. The students are drawn like magnets, which I know won't help. So I take Cindy outside and sit down with her for a good almost five minutes and we talk about her homework.

She says to me, again in Korean, I don't know how to do the homework. It's too hard and I can't do it. And so I said to her, if you can't do because you don't know how, I understand. You can come see me any time when you don't know how to do your homework. In the mornings, or lunch or after school. And so I told her we can do our homework together during lunch time today.

But she made some excuses like what if there isn't enough time after I eat, and I thought maybe she was just upset that she couldn't get a sticker because she hadn't done her homework, and that she didn't really care at all. But I told her, just come and we will do what we can.

And then at the end of class Cindy came up to me and she said, as always, in Korean, Teacher, I will not play today after lunch. I will come straight here, and then I will come after classes end too if I have to so I can finish my homework.

And you know what? She did just that.

She came at lunch and worked on her homework in class with me and her classmate Sally who is even more of a beginner at English than she is. And then the moment class ended she came to my classroom door with her books in her hand looking at me like, let's start!

And we did. We did one whole chapter of the workbook, which is a lot (about two and a half weeks of homework almost) and she just worked her little butt off. And then after a whole hour of just me an hear looking at her workbook, I had to tell her it's time over and I had to work. And she said to herself, "oh I don't want to stop," and then looked at me and said, "I'll come tomorrow at lunch."

I don't think I've ever felt so fulfilled doing what I'm doing that I did at that moment when she showed me just how bad she wants this, and how much she trusts me to help her get there. Her English is not bad. She is probably much better than the rest of her class. But her confidence in English is no good. I will make that change 100 percent. She will be the class star by Summer vacation.

Mark my words.