inappropriateness....

Conversation with a student yesterday...

Me: "Alright, guys! Class is over! Time to go!"
Student: "Class is over already?"
Me: "Yeah, but you can stay if you want!"
Student: "Only if you stay!"
Me: "Nah, I have to eat. I'm hungry!"
Student: "You need a diet!"
-----------------------------------------

Today, same student...

Me: "Hey! You owe me an apology for yesterday!"
Stdeunt: "Yes, teacher! Sorry! You have nice body, very nice body!"

Lesson learned (or: ...did I really say that?)

Being a novice teacher can be difficult, and,in case you have a good sense of humor, hilarious. Before starting to teach ESL in the fall, I had only taught German as a foreign language to a 97% homogeneous American classroom (yep, I had one student from Japan, one from Korea and one from Kazakhstan), so there is the occasional cultural faux-pas I commit without realizing it (uhm, it usually dawns on me quickly, though).

• One example for this would be the family tree assignment. When you talk about families in the classroom, having students draw a family tree for homework seems to make sense, right? Oh well, imagine you teach a classroom full of Chinese (1 child family) and Emirati (an average of 20 siblings and 2 mothers) students. uhm... yeah. Lesson learned.

• Another glorious example of epic cultural fail is the brilliant question "so, what do you guys expect from a future partner?" (uhm, we were talking about people, using adjectives). Again, this didn't go over so well with the Saudi and Emirati students. Lesson learned. Definitely.
  

October 14th, 2009

Ahhh, grading dictations and final presentations. These are just some highlights:

Dictations:

"I never wear boots" was turned into "I never wear birch" (imagine going to Ikea yelling "... but I NEVER wear birch!"), "I never wear buts" and "I never wear bum".

"I never wear glasses" turned into "I never wear grasses"!

and my favorite from that particular test: " I like pants too" turned into "I like panties" (I rather not know that especially if that particular student is going to be in my class again next semester.)


Spell check errors:

Have you guys heard about the sober-toothed tiger? I hear he stopped drinking last year...