Classroom Emergency

Attention Grabber:
Have you ever seen a group of 9 year olds huddled over their desks gleefully drawing pictures of murder and mayhem? I have. Not only have I seen it, but I instructed them to do it.

Introduction, Set Up and First Digression:
Now in my lifetime I have see a lot of Asians (What? Can't I say that. Shoot, I eat rice five meals a day). There is one thing that I simply must say about Asian people. No matter what anyone tells you, they make the cutest kids. I mean these are seriously cute kids, like puppy bulldog in a pink tutu cute, like baby monkey wearing a tuxedo cute, like baby monkey in a tuxedo riding a puppy bulldog wearing a pink tutu waving a flag with a picture of a baby chicken on it cute. Well, maybe not that cute, but still. My students (I teach English in Thailand by the way) have these big brown eyes and puffy cheeks that make you understand why grandmas in movies (real life too?) are possessed by the need to pinch cheeks. I honestly believe that when Thai parents are looking at the monitor of their pea sized fetus in the doctors office, the gynaecologist whispers to them.

"Do you see that there? Yeah, that. That little flicker is your baby's heartbeat. Oh yeah and those are her cheeks and eyes."

Back to Story Fake Out and Second Digression:
Anyway these kids are cute...back to the story. Well, not quite yet, I must mention one student named "L", yes "L". Maybe it's spelled differently in Thai but that is certainly how you pronounce it. He is easily my most misbehaved student and just as easily my favorite. He is like a six year old Asian Elvis Presley mixed with a St. Bernard. Whenever, I raise my voice in an attempt to stop him from throwing his body into the wall, a harmless yet distracting behavior, he does not cower in fear. He actually has two responses. One, is to bounce rapidly on his tiptoes with his fingers pointed to the sky with his hip shaking (The Elvis allusion) . His other move is to do a very similar dance(?) but flat on his back. This move resembles a very cute seizure. But, unfortunately "L" is in grade one and grade one is not part of the story. So, lets skip ahead to the last class of the day.

Story:
The last class of the day is Health Conversation Class. It is a conversation class about health with a textbook from Singapore. The class is somewhat difficult to teach due to the fact that the textbook is 20 pages long with half of it focusing on Singapore(eg. Name seven of Singapore's crucial water reservoirs? The kids could only name three. Idiots.). The other half focuses on Menstruation, which seems age inappropriate because my students are nine years old and only one of six of them is a girl. Now that I think of it the only good thing about the book is that its made of paper. Needless to say I am constantly searching for material to teach.

On that fateful day I decided I would use a page in the book that had the students discuss Emergencies. The page had pictures and little boxes to check if it was an emergency. In one of the pictures a girl was choking and in a different one she had merely cut her finger. What we decided was that the common theme was that in an Emergency someone might die. In a non-emergency death will probably not be the outcome.

In order to have the students demonstrate their understanding of what an emergency is I asked them to draw an example of an emergency. I don't know what I was thinking or what I was imagining but I must disclose that their drawings far exceeded my expectations. I sat back for perhaps two minutes to let them work on their drawings and by the time I began to patrol the class and observe their progress I realized that I may have made a small mistake. The first drawing was of someone who had just been hit by a bus. This was the least violent of all the drawings. I realised at that moment that these children are just as inundated with violent culture as American children, maybe more. In Thailand they will blur out a cigarette or a breast but a group of zombies feeding on a screaming person is common entertainment for a family dinner.

The next drawing was of the least creative uses of a machine gun. But, the final and most horrific example of my poor choice of assignments was surprising and sad and funny all at once. At first it appeared to be a man on fire, no not the Denzel variety but really just a man who was standing in flames. I thought, OK, a little graphic perhaps but a fire is a good example of an emergency. But, before I could say, "Guacamole filled waterballoons!" I realised what had caused the fire. This students idea of an emergency was a smiling stick figure holding a remote controlled detonator that clearly had been detonated.

The moral of the story:
The moral of the story is that if you want a group of nine year olds to draw something socially acceptable then you better give them some guidelines. Otherwise they will follow your directions literally. After all, if you saw a burning three fingered stick figure with a perfectly circular torso then, despite his smile, you wouldn't need a six year old to tell you it was an emergency.