P or N

Today was an intake day at the school. What is an intake day? well it is a day where we receive a bunch of new students who wantto study for some time. During such days, teachers are prety fortunate. we only teach 2 hours but get paid for 4.5. we do what we call workshops on specific things. Kind of easy and no marking involved.

My workshop was with the most advanced classes in the school. Our subject:understanding the media.

I chose to do an activity that was not the same old newspaper thing but to do an article about how the media can shape how we perceive things. Our topic was BEER. it was popular with the students. We made a list of all the things that we thought of when we thought of BEER. The list said some things like this:

Simpsons
pub
bar
drunk
party
fun
dance
friends
hangover

after our brainstorming i had them catagorize each of these words into whether they were positive, negative of neutral. i put an N for negative, P for positive and Ne for neutral.

Now, some of these words could have been both P and N or even all three options. So, i wrote next to one of the words P or N. soon after this i noticed my students chickling about something. One of them said i had written something funny. i was embarrassed because i thought i had made a silly mistake. I checkedtheboard andfound nothing. they continued to laugh and then decided it was no problem andi should continue. so i looked back once more... i knew there was something. Then i saw it. P or N? porn? OOPS!

they thought it was so funny. i had to laugh. i then replaced my Or with a dash and the lesson continued. i guess i could have made a lesson of it about subliminal messages... but i didnt.

Genuine Oakley's

Teaching is always so full of surprises. I am loving it more and more every time i step into a class. I love meeting with the ESL students from all over the world and seeing their outlook on life being from other countries.

There is another perk to teaching too. gifts! i received my very first present for teaching. Sometimes we have students who, before they leave, offer gifts to their teachers as a thank you. Some give mini ornaments and others give cards.

Yesturday i taught my level one class for the last time of the week. One of my students ( the same one with the foot fingers incidednt [ see previous post]) seemed very distracted. I wonderedd over to see if i could figure out what he was whispering about but he saw me coming. He started trying to tell me and then reverted to his spanglish. He took out a pair of sunglasses " You like...?" at this point he had a very confused look on his face because he couldnt find the word 'sunglasses'.

Jose: "its a..."
Perla/Sonia: gift? gift!
Jose: yes, special for me, gift.
[he hands the Oakleys to me]
Katie: oh, they are nice. They were a gift?
Jose: No, gift. you. gift.
Katie: [me looking confused]
You want me to have the glasses?
Jose: yes! gift.

See, Jose is a race car driver. He has a picture on his laoptop of him wearing his Oakleys after driving in a race. He wanted me to have his special Oakleys. This is really not a big deal because they are his sponsor. The next day he came to class and had another pair. But he really wanted me to have his special pair.

I accepted but it was slightly embarrassing. Not the gesture but the action of it in front of the whole class. Some of the students laughed. Im sure i was as red as a tomato... it was so sweet of him. And it was my first present as an ESL teacher. What a gift! I will never wear them but i dont want to give them away when i know they were special to him...