Cowing Around: November 2012

There's a boy in school.... well, I'll call him Webber here. There are a few problematic kids in school and Webber is one of them. No he is not a naughty or rude boy. In fact, you will hardly hear his name being called any time. The problem with Webber is he never does his home work.

Webber's former class teacher is a spartan-style hot head. Don't get me wrong, she's a great teacher in certain aspects and she has more compassion for her students than anyone I know. However, her style of teaching isn't for Webber. She practically leaves him behind because she only had patience for the elite.

The teacher passed away recently, so a replacement teacher came. That doesn't seem to help. Webber still isn't doing his home work.

Last semester, I have briefly guided Webber on his home work. It was quite an weird experience. The home work was a comprehension essay in Chinese with a couple of multiple choice questions. Webber can read all of the words. He understands the literal meaning of the essay, but he simply cannot understand the moral value that the essay was trying to teach. It seemed as though Webber had never ever come across this moral value, which is one has to be determined to finish what he started no matter how much harder it gets.

It was tough for Webber. He can spend hours writing just a few words. Is it concentration issue? Is it understanding issue? Or is it attitude?

One thing for sure is Webber has already recognized himself as the slowest student in the whole world.

Under the previous regime, the teacher banned Webber's classmates from lending him anything to work with. Webber came to school everyday without his home work, and of course, he gets punished by having to do his unfinished home work while the rest of the class was having fun. Of course Webber won't want to focus on his unfinished home work. He wanted to be a part of the class that has rejected him.

So I have a theory on Webber. He comes to school knowing that the teacher is going to give him a hard time for not doing his home work, but he still doesn't do his home work. Just like a suicide attempt, most just want attention, sending a message calling for help. Webber can be in the same state, trying to send a message in his subconsciousness. It just take someone to figure out what it is. I haven't.

Kids in this school gets tagged by teachers. Not good. Webber is one of them. So much so that Webber doesn't really have any play mate, all but his puppies.

Well, Webber isn't a good dog buddy either. He borderline abuses his dogs and I've been told that he has caused many deaths of his past pets. He sounded like a serial pet murderer or something. However, Webber has this adult yellow dog that just adores Webber. Seeing him interact with Webber, I've never seen such a loyal dog in my life. He follows Webber to school in the morning, and waits for him to get off. Webber doesn't treat him badly. He just doesn't know how to treat him the right way. Webber also has two other puppies in his cage, too small to be let out. One of them died. Perhaps illness, perhaps it was just too weak to survive. I told Webber to stop adopting puppies. He doesn't know how to take care of them.

Webber tend to have this habit of tailing other kids. When some kids get together to play, Webber tails them. He doesn't go up to ask if he can join them because he knows that he will get rejected, but he tails them any way. So one afternoon, Webber was tailing two kids. These two kids got fed up with Webber and confronted him. They exchanged words and then one of them held Webber while the other hit him. The two kids then went to tell on Webber to the cops and to Webber's grand mother. Webber's grand mother thought Webber was at fault, but later found out that Webber was sort of the victim, and went to confront the two kids. The grand mother then came to school to report the incident to the teachers. Mean while, one of the two kids thought they needed revenge. So they opened Webber's puppy's cage and let it run loose. The puppy, being in the cage all the time, went wild and onto the road. It wasn't long before a car came along and ran over it.

Webber, devastated, was crying. A teacher saw Webber and went over to find out what's going on. It was then when the adult yellow dog took a bite to the teacher's leg, thinking that he was going to do Webber harm.

So Webber not only lost his puppy, but also the yellow dog because his grand mother doesn't want another biting incident and sent the dog away. Webber has no one to play with now.

Never mind the two idiots. It's a shame that we can no longer punish kids. I'd have had them kneel in front of the whole school if I am in the position to school them.

I briefly spoke to Webber's teacher about this, but was very disappointed that she can't see beyond this "good student/bad student" mentality. Webber lost what's important to him. Sure he needs to do his home work. Sure the dogs are consuming too much of his attention. However, these are not the reason why he is being tagged. Webber never found the help he was looking for when he started having problems. No one really helped him and he's lost. I can't bear to see him fall deeper especially with the lost of his companions. He's not a stupid kid. He's polite, soft spoken, just with bad attention span and serious lack of confidence.

So I decided to have him stay behind on Wednesdays for remedial, hopefully to restore some of his confidence while putting some pressure on him to perform. Today was the first session.

While helping other kids, Webber was told to finish some home work. It's a simple one, just copy and write the words selected by his teacher. It's just a task of copy and write many many times, and it's not even that much work. Webber works really slow, reaaallly slow. For the first two hours, he only did about 1/10 of the work. I kept telling him that he needs to train himself to write faster, because no one's going to wait for him outside of school. He just kept dragging his feet.

Mean while, I was drilling on another kid teaching him the first five letters in the alphabets. He's 4th grade and should have learnt this by third grade. Even the third graders do better than him. While doing so, I was drawing stuffs on the black board to liven the teaching. Instead of just testing the kid on the letters, I draw a dragon to test him on "D" and "A", and an elephant to test "E" and "A". Then as I was drawing a .....

"Donkey!" A voice spoke. It was Webber. He said,"Donkey" which no one in school has taught him.

Then he said,"There's a donkey in Shrek, and an Ogre too!" He said "Ogre" in English, with perfect pronunciation. Ogre with the "R", not Engrish like most kids do.

He said the local hostel-style hotel puts up outdoor movies on weekend nights and he loves watching Shrek, and picked up those words. I was impressed, very impressed! I think I found Webber's talent!

It was 3.30pm and I meant to wrap the session up at 4pm. I told Webber, "If you finish that line in time, I will draw you a Dracula." He looked and the clock, took a deep breath and went to town with his home work. In no time, as in just 15 minutes, he finished that line. That line alone was more work than what he did in the first two hours. I asked him how long did he take to do that. He looked at the clock and said 15min.

"See, you can do it!"

Then I said, if you finish the next line before 4pm, I will draw something else. He did it in 5min. I think he must have been impressed too!

Then I said, if you finish the rest of the home work tonight, I will draw you anything you want. Now that's raising the stake!

Tomorrow, we'll see. I better get my pen ready!

*Update* The son of a b*tch didn't do his homework the that night.

Cowing Around

Cowing Around

Blog Archive

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

The boy "Webber"

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Sports Day!