The fan man

I had the privilege of teaching a dead set legend that I'm going to call Jem. I had a lot to do with him in Kindergarten, even though he wasn't in my class and then I got to teach him in Grade 1. This kid has an absolute heart of gold and a wicked sense of humour. He is also on the Autism Spectrum but is very high functioning and I doubt that the average person would realise; they would probably just describe him as eccentric or quirky.  Well this kid loves fans. It's his thing.

I'd regularly walk in the classroom to find our ceiling fans belting at maximum speed and worksheets aggressively flapping around the place in the blast while Jem sheepishly peered around the door at me and giggle. It'd be the dead of winter and we'd all be wrapped up in layers of jumpers when suddenly a gusty breeze would swirl around the backs of our necks. I'd look over to the door and there would be Jem, his big rosy cheeks in a taut grin.

"Jem..." I'd say, "Did you turn the fans on?"

He'd shrug, unashamed, hoot with laughter and shout "YES, I can't help it!"

His Dad, as rosy cheeked and as jovial as his son, told me at parent teacher conference that he thought that one day the roof would blow clear off the house because Jem would constantly turn all the fans on at home.

At the beginning of the year, I showed the kids how to make a simple powerpoint presentation and they could insert any pictures they wanted and write a few lines about anything at all.

Jim somehow managed to find a picture of a placidly smiling Asian boy wearing glasses and inserted a single textbox with just one word.

"FAN"

He went to Fiji for a week and came back with beads in his fringe and got up during afternoon news to tell us all about his holiday.

"Well, first we stayed at this hotel which was OK but not that good because it just had air-conditioning. Then we changed to another hotel and that was so much better because it had fans."

He also loved to joke around and possessed a rather sophisticated, adult sense of humour. I'd had a really rough morning with behaviour and many things going wrong and was busting for recess and a moment of solitude. The bell rang and Jem was hanging back.

"Go outside Jem."

He dawdled while flashing me a cheeky smile over his blue-tracksuit clad shoulder. This kid knew how to push my buttons.

"JEM. OUT."

Just then one of my lovely girls came back in, hysterical with tears flowing freely.

"MISS CARLSON I CAN'T FIND MY HAT"

The usual nurturing niceties followed -

"It's just a small problem, dear, I'm sure it's just hiding somewhere in the bag room let's go and have a little look, don't worry."

It wasn't in her bag. It wasn't in the bag room. My twenty minutes of peace was dwindling and I desperately wanted to find this hat and then hide under the desk with my banana and yoghurt.

Jem pops his head around the corner.

"I know where the hat is, Miss Carlson."

Jem did have a tendency to occasionally hide things as a joke and I entertained the thought that perhaps he had squirrelled the hat away in a tote tray or stuffed it behind the class library.

"Ok Jem where is it?"

He walked at snail pace back into the classroom and started peeking under desks and then laughing back at me.

"Jem, enough. Do you know where the hat is or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, Miss Carlson it's just over here."

By this time my frustration was peaking and I'm sure I had veins throbbing in my forehead. Jem walked over to the window and was seemingly looking under the blinds for the hat then turned to me and cackled,

"I'M JOKING MISS CARLSON!"

At this, I was nearly hysterical myself and felt weird tears stemming from irritation and hilarity. I took a seat at one of the student desks and put my head in my hands.

"Jem, go outside! I'm about to have a mental breakdown."

At this, he clapped me on the back, smacked his lips and cheesed his chortling expression inches from my face.

"Well, Miss Carlson. That's just embarrassing."

With that, he sprinted out of the classroom crowing with delight while I was left cry-laughing with just minutes before the end of recess bell.

Update

Through the magic of Facebook memories, this delightfully hilarious blog appeared on my newsfeed this afternoon and I was drenched in nostalgia as I remembered some of these stories from my first year of teaching. So much has changed since then! A few months after my last post I was offered a full time position teaching Kindergarten and twelve months after that I applied for a permanent position and was successful. I jumped through a million hoops to get the position, which I will have to detail in another post but the bottom line was that it was all completely mad and stressful. At the same time, I went through an enormous personal upheaval that saw my ten year relationship with my fiancee come to an end. More madness and more stress.

I decided to be crazy, brave, wild and/or spontaneous, sell everything I owned and move to Thailand. I felt compelled to finish up 2014 with my lovely Grade 1 kids and so moved to Bangkok just before Christmas. I arrived with no job, no apartment and a whole lotta devil-may-care attitude. I found a job within a month at a great family-style International Preschool in the heart of Bangkok city and signed an 18 month contract. I will have to share some memories of this school and the kids that I taught; I learnt so much about myself as a teacher and was introduced to a completely new breed of parent - the expats!

Although I loved this school, with my experience and qualifications I knew that I could be earning a lot more at a big International school and financial security had become a priority since I had fallen pregnant. I waddled into an interview while 38 weeks pregnant and what could have potentially been a 10 minute interview went for nearly 90 minutes as my boss and I discussed all facets of education and learning, my previous teaching experiences and living life abroad. I was offered a job on the spot.

I'm now 6 weeks into my new contract at Berkeley International School in Bangkok, Thailand!

This is my 5th year teaching and I really feel that this is the first year that I truly feel on top of my work. I'm finally able to repeat successful lessons (rather than inventing everything from scratch) and I have to commend my new school for having excellent communication and organisation procedure, so as long as I can click around on my google account each day, I can stay abreast of everything that is going on.

Here's to cracking open the old blog again!