Category Archives: Teaching

The other day Michael happened to be in the office while a new student was being registered. The student, a boy who is probably seven years old, was there with his mother. The TA’s were telling the mother about the help available for students outside of class when the boy interrupted:
“Oh, I won’t need any extra help from you. All my Mom’s boyfriends are foreigners.”

The other day in class, my high school students were telling me about things they’re grateful for. That’s how I found out that Bernice really likes Nazis.

At first I thought her classmates were teasing her, so we opened the floor for Bernice to defend herself.

“I like Germany the country.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean you’re a Nazi.”
“Also, I am interested in German history, especially World War II. I like the German army very much. They had nice uniforms.”
“That still doesn’t make you a Nazi.”
“And I think the Nazi generals were very great. They were very smart. And the Germans, the Nazis, did many great things.”
“Ahh–well…”
“Also, I think Hitler was a great leader. So my class thinks of me of a Nazi. That’s all.”

I looked around at her classmates and most had the same sangfroid “told-ya-so” expression.

In spite of all that, I’m not willing to write her off and call her a Nazi. To me, Bernice is a Nazi enthusiast.

As part of my  lesson plan to teach American culture and history, this week I started teaching the Declaration of Independence to my high school kids. Apparently I couldn’t have timed things worse–after some prompting, my students informed me that this weekend one of the papers ran an entire ad-free issue entitled something like “American Atrocities” that gave a rundown of all the bad things America is doing in the world. This left my students pretty unreceptive to discussing the lofty ideals of the Declaration, but the newspaper did help spark some spirited debate (“It [The Declaration] is a lie.” “America is very bad. But you are very nice.”) and gave me a nice chance to teach them the word hypocrisy.

On the other hand, my classes all really liked that any American can run for President. They also all agreed that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are fundamental rights. Some also listed freedom of expression (specifically criticism of the government), universal health care, and education as other fundamental rights. There was disagreement over whether availability of work is a fundamental right, but only because some of the students felt very strongly that people should be allowed to stay at home and do nothing if they so wish. If I had to work as hard as they do, I’d probably feel the same way.

My friend Charles rightly pointed out that if I want to talk about American culture I probably should have started with something fun and easy like baseball rather than jumping into the Declaration. Good point, Charles.

I hope everyone has a great Valentine’s Day. I spent it with my students teaching them how to make paper hearts and making pig hats (see photo–the coming lunar year is the Year of the Pig). We decided to make the paper hearts into valentines for our mothers, so I had them copy “Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, _____” from the board. When I saw that they were copying the _____ rather than adding their name, I wrote “Love, Luke” on the board and worked with each of them to make sure they signed their English names.

After I left work the kids decided to draw me “thank you” pictures, each of which was carefully inscribed with “Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Luke”.

After work I spent a good five minutes climbing the fence to get back into my dorm. The gate to my school closes at ten, so if I get back late I have to shimmy over the fence. The security guys have all told me it’s fine to do, but the goddamn fence has spikes. When they say it’s fine to do I guess they’re just leaving out “if you’re stupid enough to try”.
Usually I’m able to avoid the spikes, but when the weather is icy mistakes are easy to make and the spikes seem extra sharp. So far they’ve claimed one pair of jeans and a jacket. I’ve put in a request for a new apartment–hopefully I’ll be moving soon.