A Year In Indochina: Swords, stars and butterflies

These are the types of things the students in my art class came up with today when I set them the assignment of designing their own flag to represent them if they were kings and queens of the world.

The idea for this activity was born from Tuesday's class, when we started playing Pictionary on the blackboard, and one of the students drew the Vietnamese flag. I wrote the English word next to the drawing and all of the class picked it up, eagerly repeating the voluptuous word: "flag, flag, flag". This got us onto a game of drawing different world flags on the blackboard and seeing who could identify them, which the children loved.

So, I took this inspiration for an easy art class for today. I spent much of the morning visiting every convenience shop in Phu My Hung to find wooden skewers to use as little flag poles. When I arrived at the school I was pleased to see the kids in the playground outside smiling at my arrival, and become very excited when I brought the paints out from the office. I was thrilled that they had evidently enjoyed the painting last time. And today, I was amazed to find that they sat for almost two hours engaged in the task, with no need for a break to play games outside.

I only had eight today, and they were unnervingly well-behaved for nearly all of the session. Perhaps it was end-of-the-week lethargy: when I arrived at the playground I was surprised to see most of the kids sleeping, not playing noisily as they were on Tuesday. The room was silent as they set into the task. Many of them took inspiration from the national flag- in fact one girl replicated it completely despite my attempts to encourage her to personalise it a bit. For others, one large yellow star or several stars were central to their designs. There were also some very unique ideas, such as one boy's outer-space design (I guessed he was imagining himself as ruler of the universe) and another that incorporated mountains, clouds, rainbows, love-hearts and stars. This one belonged to little Tuyết, 12, the sparkiest and naughtiest girl of the class who ran straight at me when she arrived at the school. She loves to sing and dance, to be tickled and to run up to the front of the classroom and start drawing on the blackboard. She is very sweet and funny but I have to make sure she is kept busy or else she will start fighting with the boys.

Today I brought along post-it notes so the kids could write their name and stick it to the desk. As a result I have learnt a few more of their names. I hope I have used the correct spellings- I am relying on my memory and from checking on the internet- but if I have made any mistakes I will correct them later. I also found out my students' ages. The girls in my class today were all twelve besides Yên, who is fifteen. The boys were mostly older- aged fourteen to sixteen besides Dương, who is ten and is very cute. Funnily enough, there doesn't seem to be any problem with the age disparity in the class- the students all play together and even the fifteen and sixteen year old boys are happy to paint their own flags, an activity really aimed at younger students. It is also worth remembering that these students may count their age one year ahead- as is common in some parts of Asia- as they are considered to be 'one' at birth. Certainly they all look much younger than they really are.

All of the children work at different paces. Some quickly find inspiration and begin drawing, whereas others sit contemplating for a long time and trying out different ideas. These students were the last to start painting and the last to finish their work. There was no problem in this except that I had to keep those who had finished first busy by asking them to draw different things for me to stop them running around. Eventually I had to encourage slow-and-steady Yên to finish her work at ten past four when it looked like she would happily sit there for the rest of the day if she could, being so careful and meticulous. At the end of the day they all went home just a little bit hyper and waving their very own flags.