Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Shock and awe tactics

My students got their report cards on Friday, so this week marks the beginning of a new marking period. For reasons unknown to me, certain classes and teachers get entirely new schedules each marking period and others do not. Naturally the roster of stable and changing classes does not remain the same from marking period to marking period. Remarkably, today saw only the second time that I've walked in on the completely wrong class after one of these changes, but it happened.

On the bright side, I may be getting to know a new sixth grade class who I visited today. As is typical my first time in a class, the students had a chance to ask me questions about myself, the States, English, etc. This led to several cute moments. Upon learning that I come from the States, the entire class let out a collective gasp of amazement. One little girl asked me how it was to live in the best country in the world. ("Um...it's not the best?" "For us, it is!") A little boy asked me "Was you ever visited the London Dungeon?" and seemed very sad when I told him that dungeons are typically too scary for me. He brightened considerably when I said I liked the London Eye and Buckingham Palace and he informed me that he planned to visit London one day.

Later in the day I accompanied several hundred students to a screening of The Hobbit in English, which I think was more a treat for me than for them. As you remember from before, I saw the movie in German and enjoyed it, but I really enjoyed it when I could understand all the dialogue.

One of my seventh grade students asked me on the way out if I'd understood everything said in the movie. I deadpanned "not everything" and he got a faintly horrified look on his face. "Really? It must be very hard English," he said. I couldn't help but laugh. Since we weren't in class I spoke German with the students, much to their delight, and they all informed me "Jessica, your German is so good! You should speak it all the time with us." Nice try kids.

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