Pictionary

Here is a Syrian student's interpretation of "girl" for a game of Pictionary.



See if you can get this next one:











Did you get it?





It's Pamela Anderson. (Artist, Turkish, clearly influenced by Picasso.)

Best Wipe Board Ever

From Jung Ho's report on "A Religion Other than My Own."

This shares space with "Best Power Point Slide Ever," from Nargiza's presentation on "Something Interesting About My Culture." She chose "Bride Kidnapping," and the slide header was "Who Does Bride Kidnapping?" She had those animated bullet points that flew over:
*ugly guys
*crazy guys
*guys with pressure from parents

Actually, to be fair, I learned a lot from that report. Bride kidnapping is horrible. Here's the video she showed us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjkWvt-OZLk

Birthday White Board

This is what the white board in my classroom looked like on the day after my birthday.

Leggy's Revenge

We have cockroaches in my classroom. Whenever one comes in, we get a multinational freakout, with screams of horror in 10 different languages.

The other day Abdullah killed a cockroach with his shoe, helpfully setting off a good practice in past conditionals, for the purposes of which I christened the departed "Leggy."

This led to some confusion, and now a lot of my students think that the English word for "cockroach" is "Leggy."

I either can't bring myself to, or don't actually want to clear it up.

Seriously? What does this mean?

Is "score" a noun here? Like "a score?" If not it should be "beefily score," like in the imperative. But it doesn't seem like a command. "Beefily scored?"

I have no idea what this means.

Another Masterwork

This is an illustration I made while trying to explain "Ants on a Log" to a room full of Thai and Japanese students.

For only having 3 dry erase markers, I think this is inspired!

The List

I know I'm wrong about the New York Post Editorial Cartoon
I know I'm wrong about the fourth wall
I know I'm wrong to use "Straight White Guys" as a blanket term
I know I'm wrong about facebook
I know I shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition, even though it's generally acceptable now. As an English teacher, it's my duty to be a last holdout on things like this, like the English Teacher in "Frindle."

I just don't feel much like arguing, lately.

And I'm anemic, that's why I have to eat hamburgers. I could die.

Best use of quotation marks "ever"

The Best ESL Writing of 2008- Winner!

This year's winner, Saied E. with his essay "A City On A Hill"

Question: In your opinion, is America still a "city on a hill" as described by John Wintrhop in "A Model of Christian Charity?"

Before I decide is America a city on a hill, I have to know, what is a city on a hill mean?
I think it is a big term and I have a difficulty to describe in these few lines, but I will try to summarize as possible as I can.
What are the requirements of any city to be a city on a hill? I think there is a lot of things that make a city is a city on a hill. But I think it's different from one person to another. Everyone has his opinion about what is the city on a hill looks. In my opinion, a city on a hill must has a civilization and a heritage. It should not has economic slump, disputation, and no corruption.
Is a city that all people help each other to achieve their goals and those have great attitude and work with each other as one man. In my opinion, to be a city on a hill this city must has unique culture, weather, and situation.
In addition, people of this city must entertain each other in brotherly affection, no discrimination, crime, robberies and a bias.
A city that most people look to it as model of the best cities in the world.
Evolving is not enough to say that city is a city on a hill. There is a lot of things we have to consider when we say that.
Ultimately, if you think the USA has most of these things, so it is a city on a hill.

And the postscript:

Erin McKean on Descriptive vs. Prescriptive

I want to

a) date this girl
b) bring her message to the world

It's definitely worth watching her whole speech.

Ship! Sheep! Ship! Sheep!

Go look at this!

Professionally Develop'd!!

Today I did an online teacher training, which was required for work. Mostly it just told me stuff about the curriculum, but the best part was when the screen came up that said "More About Pair Work" at the top, and had a random clipart of a handsome Asian businessman at the bottom.

"Hey," asked a jolly voice, "Can I talk to you about some of the potential problems of pairwork?

"Yes!" answered the person who I guess was supposed to be me.

Then the first person warned me not to pair a "creepy guy" with a "sensitive girl."

Online training, where have you been all my life? I wish I'd known that a long time ago.

English Firstly

Rachel is teaching a class on the culture wars, and she had to find a speaker from the "English First" movement. These are people who believe that English should be the official language of the US, and want to take down signs in Spanish/Chinese etch in public places.

This be their logo:

From the Great Young Gyeom Kim

Today in listening class we were doing the This American Life where John Hodgeman asks people which super power they would choose: flight or invisibility. I asked the students what they would choose before we listened, and most said flight. (Except Won Kyu (AKA Juan Q) and the new shifty guy from Libya.)

In the story, John Hodgman says that he ultimately believes that flight represents confidence and heroism, and invisibility represents fear and sneakiness. He surmises that people who choose flight are trying to project a heroic image of themselves, when in reality, the only honest answer is invisibility. He frames it as "a question of whether we want to be the person we hope to be or the person we fear we are."

After we listened, I asked the students if they wanted to change their answers, and this was Young Gyeom Kim's:

I'm going to keep flight, because it's better to be a confident liar than a fearful person.

One for the ages, Young.

Words of wisdom

"Before I will get older than now, I must bump against the world.
The world is very large, and there are many things that I have to do."

-Jin Young Kim
High Intermediate A

C'mon Everybody!

"Do you know what a hayride is? You sit on old dry grass! And it doesn't sound like fun....but it is!"

(Suzanne explaining a weekend event to the students)

Decidedly Non-Native

Ohhhhhhh! That explains it!

Last week we were studying emotional intelligence, and I asked the students to write an opinion essay on whether they felt that women have a higher EQ than men, and whether this is the result of biology or cultural conditioning. The responses were enlightening in general, but my favorite was this gem from Mr. Kim:

"Of course the men are more emotionally intelligent to the women, because all of famous artists are men. If the women are emotionally intelligent, we would see many famous artists who are women. But actually, we don't see this. So we can know that men have higher EQ."

I'll bet the Guerrilla Girls are going to be embarrassed when they figure that one out.

The Grinch Who Stole Ramadan

Yesterday a Libyan student asked not to be paired with a scantily clad Colombian girl for a vocabulary exercise because, he claimed:

"Her bosoms are ruining my feast."