little fists flying

and angry tears streaming down little philip's face.

my first in-classroom fight.

So i have these two cuties in my 1st/2nd grade english class. Tom is a small boy with a deep voice that doesn't match his tiny body. Philip is a even smaller boy with the cutest angel face. They sound adorable, don't they? It gets better. These two munchkins both wear glasses. little, mini, tiny cute glasses.

I don't know how it started exactly, but i look down and i see tiny fists flying at each other, hard. I separate the two, tell the other kids their butts better not move from their chair, talk to philip and tom, individually, outside the classroom, punish andy for getting out of his chair by taking away one of his stickers, had to get kimberly teacher from the next room because i couldn't speak korean to them, it all happened so fast.

i separated the two boys, made them sit in different rows and went on with my lesson in peace. i think the other students were freaked out because i had to use my serious, stern voice to separate the two during the fight. they've only seen my smile-y side until then.

it was all good, there was 2 minutes left of class, but then.....

philip and tom start fighting AGAIN!!!!

I use my stern voice to tell them to stop fighting, tom listens, but little philip is beyond hearing, his fists keep flying while tom is just standing there. I pick up philip and he's just sooo angry that his little fists are still punching at the air trying to get at tom.

after class they are held back, kimberly teacher does a mini interrogation to find out what happened and calls their parents to fill them in on the details.

In situations like this i wish i could just speak Korean and handle it myself. This pretend-you-can't-speak-a-lick-of-Korean rule is getting old.

All in all, it wasn't too bad, but it would have been easier if i could just deal with issues like this on my own.

Actually teaching these last two days has been pretty good. It's not as difficult as I thought it would be, I don't know what i was so worried about.

maybe i should stay on my guard, just in case those cute tiny fists are ever directed at me...