Good deed for the day.

[snarp]

Tonight, on my way home, I found a bunch of trading cards - Pokemon, Something Something Battle, and other franchises unknown to me - scattered on the sidewalk by the traffic light closest to the school. I was in a hurry to get back because I had received an urgent summons from the chili in the fridge, but, you know. I work at a school. Some kid’s mom might well call up in the morning saying that Taro’s all crying because he lost his foil Bulbasaur.

So I gathered them all up and took them up to Kagura-sensei (named for her love of Fruits Basket), who rushed them over to Manager and engaged him in an intense discussion of which kid liked both Pokemon and Something Something Battle. They didn’t come to any conclusions, but the cards are in the lost-and-found now.

I hope they actually belong to one of the kids who goes here - it’s a busy intersection. It’s just that of the establishments on that block, we’re the one with the most Pokemon-card intensive traffic, so I figured odds were good they belonged to one of our students. Some of them had already gotten torn up from being on the ground, so I didn’t want to just leave them there.

Mr. Weepy is a little creep. As predicted, today he got all broody when I wouldn’t let him play with blocks instead of studying English, so he started crying, to try and make his Mom think I was being mean to him. But it’s better than that. I had tapped him on the forehead to get his attention, and he pretended I had poked him in the eye. Jesus, sweetie. Regrettably for Mr. Weepy, his mom was talking to Mr. Clown’s mom when this went down, so this masterful performance went entirely to waste.

We have a new girl in Mr. Weepy and Mr. Clown’s class as of last week - a two-year-old, who absolutely should not be in this class - and of course, Mr. Weepy was obnoxious to her. “She’s a baby! She’s just a baby! Go back to mama, baby!” Luckily, Miss Foo doesn’t have the attention span necessary to recognize Mr. Weepy’s extremely subtle brand of harassment.

This week, Mr. Weepy had a change of heart. “You know,” he said consideringly to Mr. Clown as they were coloring, “Miss Foo is actually quite pretty. You’re a pretty girl, Miss Foo!” he told her, in a hilariously lecherous little voice. He obviously thought he sounded quite suave, and my laughter offended him deeply. Oh, Mr. Weepy, you’re such a lady’s man. (Miss Foo, very busy trying to figure out how to right the plastic chair she’d flipped over, remained completely unaware of Mr. Weepy’s advances.)

(Rest of the day is cut for length.)

One of my two adult students is a serial skipper - he came in today for the first time in six weeks. I’d forgotten how heavily the guy smokes. Cigarettes aren’t allowed in the building, but apparently he spends the whole day before coming in smoking continuously. After he left I had to open the window and put his chair outside to get the smell down to non-choking levels, and it was still lingering when Mr. K came in ten minutes later. The guy himself seems nice enough, though he’s only actually come in three times now. He’s a civil engineer, when I asked him what he was doing at work he excitedly started drawing me diagrams. (Apparently they’re working on an overpass and a parking structure.) It’s nice he’s enthusiastic about his work, anyway. My other adult student is apparently deeply dissatisfied with her job - she will talk about just about anything else, but not that.

Mr. K’s classes are getting kind of frustrating, because they’re half an hour, rather than fifty minutes like most of the others. I’ve got this set of lesson plans they send me each month that I’m not allowed to switch up (When I get mad enough about it, I’m probably going to write a post explaining exactly why these lessons plans are idiotic - this month’s are so terrible Manager asked me if I was okay when I saw them. I was making a face.), and he can’t learn it all in four 30-minute classes.

I feel bad because his mom’s one of the few parents who actually helps their kids study - when he turns in his homework there are always little guide-lines on there from where she was showing him how to make his letters straight. She goes over the textbook with him, too! He actually came in today knowing some textbook words I didn’t teach him last week. And she told him to behave in class when I gave him bad marks for participation last week, which means she’s one of like, three parents who’ve proven they actually look at the kids’ grades. I’d like to make his classes longer, and earlier in the day (because they’re at eight at night, which is way too late for a six-year-old), but it sounds like she just doesn’t have time to bring him in any other time. Poor Mama K.

(Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.)