There Is No Santa Claus.

“That’s what I want Santa to get me”, a little girl said the other day in my class, showing her friend a picture in a magazine. It took all the willpower that I have in order not to whisper to her with an evil smirk “There IS NO Santa Claus”. You’d expect that by the age of nine they’d be mature enough not to believe in such a thing as an old fat dude who brings them stuff for being “good”. Then I thought to myself, “stop being such a bitch alright and let the girl enjoy her childhood for as long as she can”.

 

Why be so mean anyway? After all, they are extremely cute at times. That same girl, when writing a paragraph entitled “My family”, started with the following phrase: “My father’s favourite colour is blue and his favourite sport is tennis and his love is my mother, Helen.” This was just way too adorable for my cynical and bitter soul.

However, I do get tempted to be mean when they really make no effort. In another class, I had to correct my students’ essays when I came across with the one that follows. They were given this image and were supposed to make a story out of it:

And that’s what one of my students wrote:

“Alan held the soap when he slipped pressing a ball at children. The soup rained tow custumers, these angry, rushed to wipe. Their aren’t enjoyed noewer. The end owner said theis not pay the bill.”
After a much needed facepalm, I managed to make sense of it... 

After class, I was talking to a colleague of mine about another group of students, our 12 and 13year-olds. This group only consists of boys and I mentioned to her that two of them have been particularly restless lately, probably because they see that I'm easy to laugh. She said that in order to keep them focused we need to make the lesson interesting and she suggested that a way to do that with them would be by being naked while teaching:

“Left boob, Present Perfect Simple. Right boob, Present Perfect Continuous. When do we use each tense and why?” 

I suspect we’d have issues with the management in that case though...

Our younger students are even more restless and less funny, although they have, involuntarily of course, delivered a couple of quite weird/funny lines. Not long ago, a nine-year-old boy came to me and said: “Alex kissed me on the cheek earlier, miss. I think he might be G-A-Y.”

Thus came the facepalm again.

As for them behaving, I think that an unexpected test should do the trick. No??

From Student to Teacher in 7 Days

I submitted my MA Dissertation on September 1^st and a week later I was already shaking hands with my new employer. “I'm sure we’ll have an excellent collaboration”, he said. “I hope I won’t end up in jail”, I thought. Sigh.

It’s really weird how things turn out sometimes. The majority of my friends and acquaintances are surprised when they hear of my current profession and they look at me with a mixture of horror, confusion and disbelief. "You? A teacher?!"

                                                    

And to be honest I am not less surprised myself. I had never thought that I’d have such an amazing time teaching. To be fair, I’ve only be doing it for a month so who knows how soon I’ll be having a nervous breakdown or be in serious need of pills. After all, I started writing a blog about it, didn't I?

In any case, it’s been quite fun so far. On my first day at work I asked my students “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and one of them replied “A stalker”. Or at least, that's what I heard. He had said “A historian” after all. I was losing it already.

I also find it fascinating when they literally translate words from their native language thinking they make sense in English as well. One of them recently wrote: “I like listening to music but my friend isn't a music fan. He is a sportsperson. Me and my friend John both like ice cream but we both hate skeletons. The only person who finds skeletons funny is my friend Irene. She's a boygirl.” (He meant a tomboy, naturally.)

My favourite ones are my 12 and 13-year-olds. We have already bonded and they feel confident enough to joke around me without giving it much thought. One day that they were driving me nuts I couldn’t help but say: “SHUT... Silence!” A student then uttered: “Miss, express yourself freely...”

On another day, I was erasing the board while the students were going out and suddenly I remembered something and said: “Hm, actually, guys...”

Student: “Guys, RUN before she assigns any more homework!!!”

Young legend you.

And my personal favourite so far was when I was in class one day, looking through my bag before finally finding my books and putting them on the desk.

Student (with an expression of relief but clearly joking): “Phew, I thought you were looking for the ruler!”

I laughed hard.

And that’s pretty much how it goes. They’re trying to learn, I’m trying not to lose it.

An old friend told me last night: “You’re teaching?! Oh… You’re passing on your ideas, your worldview; you’ll turn them into your clones… Poor kids!”

I looked at him amused and surprised.

He then said in all seriousness: “You are aware of the fact that they go home and wank after class, right??”

As long as they don’t do it during my lessons, they can do it all they want.