"The problem was that their were always problems."

This was one of the transition sentences for one of my students when they were writing survival stories. In English class, we are working about writing stories using complete sentences, that for my sake, don’t begin each sentence with the word “then.” They are at the age where KFC stands for “Kids Farting Club” and their favorite part of the Science book is the pictures about the digestive system. While they are at school, talking to one another and sports are the most important parts of their life. When they are home, it sounds like all but one boy spend most of their time playing video games. During our first parent-teacher meetings, I had one parent concerned that their child was not doing his homework because he watched too much TV and played too many video games (unfortunately, not letting their son watch TV or play video games was not an option for their son finishing his homework). Many of them also like WWF wrestling and I frequently walk into class or see them on the playground as they are “play fighting.”

The twenty-seven boys are all between nine and eleven years old. All but one of the students are Muslim. The class is a little over half Arab and half from elsewhere (with students from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia). Of the Arab students, they are about half from elsewhere in the Arab world and half locals. Since Wesgreen International School (where I teach) is growing in size very rapidly. Many of the teachers and parents are complaining that it is too rapidly. For instance, the school was hoping to have two new sections completed at the Boys School and neither were totally ready for the school year. So right now, half of the school and playground are an active construction area. With the increase in size there are quite a few new students at the school. All of the students do speak English although some students speak a lot stronger than others. So in addition to students divergent learning capacities, there is a definite language imbalance between the different students. I imagine it is similar to a school in the U.S. with a large Hispanic population, where the learning gaps are accentuated by the students differing linguistic abilities.

After our Eid Holiday, I moved the students to table groups instead of rows. Although they’ve been talking more, its allowed me to keep them more quiet when I need and work with students who need additional help. I’ve also got even more of a sense of my student’s personalities. Most of the time this has been for the better and it’s been fun learning more about what makes these ten-year-old boys tick. It was more unfortunate to learn that one of my students is the first ten-year-old narcissist that I think I have ever met. I was talking to one of my students who said that this other student makes all of his decisions by doing whatever he wants to do at that moment (which includes sleeI’m gradually working on finding different techniques to manage my classroom more effectively. ping in class, rarely paying attention, and throwing an eraser at my back in class today). Luckily, I asked the student who told me about this narcissist how he thought it was to live his life that way. He quickly responded that he didn’t think it was a very good way to live his life and it wouldn’t make him very happy.