It’s the Friday after the Growing Resilience In Teens (GRIT) camp, and today, I experienced a full dose of just how disparate personalities my students possess.

There’s the girl who kept largely quiet during the Google Meet session but was the fastest to finish her Padlet reflection. Zero mistakes. Nicely laid out. I gratefully let her leave the meeting while barking at the rest (read: boys) to settle down. There’s the boy who shamelessly copied and pasted his friend’s reflection. After I called him out, you would expect him to wise up, but nope, he went to copy and paste a teacher’s reflection instead. After calling him out again, he finally typed some genuine sentiments of his own. As for the girl whose literacy level was so rate but made personal history by attending a Google Meet meeting for the FIRST time ever, I lowered my standards and typed simple short sentences for her and told her to just paste onto Padlet. The boy who is second weakest in English was ironically the one who used the longest word: opportunity. He probably used predictive typing to his advantage. Not forgetting another girl who messaged me after the morning chaos was over, claiming to have suffered from a headache. I just forwarded her the link and asked her to submit her reflection. Her writing was easily the strongest because she was the only one to use words like ‘persistent’ and ‘eager’ - words that I had painstakingly taught them in class. What a way to boost my ego. The most bad-tempered boy also came late into the meeting. But somehow he always remains cool during such meetings. Today was no exception. Never once did he exhibit any impatience, not even when I asked him to put a full stop for the umpteen time.

In Chinese, we have a saying: 一种米养百种人. (Literal translation: Rice helps groom a hundred kinds of personalities.) One thing’s for sure. I’m just tickled pink by the myriad of individualities, by the patina of precious youth. I love them all.