Classroom Antics

Hug your foreign language teacher today. And if you don't have one, borrow someone else's and hug them. And if you were ever one of those students who was too shy to speak, or tried to argue about grammar, or just zoned out all class- find your teacher, apologize, and beg for forgiveness. Don't get me wrong, I understand- I was one of those students. Especially during my three semesters of Arabic. And karma, my friends, is a bitch.

The assigned lesson plans over the past three weeks have been generic and terrible, but by this point Alex and I have gotten the hang of things a bit and are much better at coming up with activities on our own. Theoretically, we're supposed to check our "revised" lesson plans with the curriculum department before running them... but considering many of them are made up the night (or the 20 minutes) before our first class, we don't exactly have time. And we are easily the most poorly supervised instructors here. True, there's always a teacher in the room during our lessons, but they rarely know what our lesson plan is supposed to be and have no interest in whether we follow it or not- they're just happy to have a break and watch someone else fumble around in the front of the room.

Three weeks ago, Alex and I organized a lesson on slang- an idea that made several instructors very nervous, because apparently one of the former native speakers considered it wise to teach the students curses including, but not limited to, "m***erf***er." Right. We came up with a list of slang nouns, verbs, adjectives, and acronyms, all appropriate and very funny. Some things you wouldn't immediately think of as slang- "to throw up," "to dump/break up with," "to freak out," to name a few. Explaining "wingman," "to rob the cradle," "cup of joe," "TMI," and "sketchy" were the highlights of my week- and I also learned that "poh-poh" (the police), is Turkish slang for butt. Giggling all around. To make the class a bit easier to run, I organized a game. Splitting the class into four teams, I made four lists on the board- each with three nouns, one adjective, two verbs, one acronym, and occasionally an idiom- think "to bury the hatchet" or "to test the waters." Each team was responsible for their own list, and they were allowed to use dictionaries, the internet, and me as a resource. None of the teachers had any idea what these words were, and all of them took notes in class- which was very funny. As for the internet, I gave them the link to urbandictionary.com - the only problem being that some pages are blocked by the Turkish government's cybernanny. But that's a whole different rant. Once we had defined every word on the board, if there was extra time, I wrote a catchphrase for each team, explained them, and gave them a few minutes to create and then perform a conversation in which one team member correctly use the catchphrase. The ones I usually used were "Say what?" "True story," "B.t.dubs.," and if I was feeling especially cruel, "awkward turtle."

Two weeks ago, Alex and I devised a vocabulary card game. We created vocab cards and divided them into four different levels of difficulty, with matching point values (hardest=4 points, etc). I split each class in half, and one team member was asked to come up, pick up a card of his choice, and stick it to his forehead- without looking at it. His teammates then shouted out words to help him figure out what the word on his forehead was, and he had one minute to figure out as many words as possible. In one class, a student held up the word "sneezing"- and his entire team immediately pretended to sneeze, causing the befuddled student to respond "God bless you...?" A girl in another class picked up a word and held it to her forehead, and the whole class started laughing, and a few students took pictures with their cell phones. The word she had picked up was "stupid." The game was fun and most classes really enjoyed it- loudly enthusiastic, most students ended up out of their seats and all over the room by the end of the class.

My second week here, Fatih, the teacher with whom I do recordings, gifted Alex and I with thirty or so large, laminated, very detailed black and white photographs- stills from old movies, although the only ones I can name are the ones with Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman in the photo. So this week, we finally used the photos- because the curriculum was absolute crap- and made the students, in small groups, create and then tell the story of what was happening in the photo. I've gotten some hysterical stories, twisted stories, some very creative ones, and one pair of girls who decided to make a political statement about their hatred for my home (thus my last brief post). Some students chose to act out their stories, others just told the story. After each story, to make them practice more than just reading a prepared story off a paper, I asked questions- about the locations, motives, history, and minor details of the story they told me. I pointed out logical fallacies, much to the amusement of their classmates, and picked apart the photograph itself. Basically, I was mean and nit-picky, but their responses were priceless. I could write a book with all the funny material they gave me, but here's a few plot outlines...
- A wife and daughter believe there are aliens in their backyard, the husband believes their "psychologies are do-da-deteriorating," so he decides to hold a garage sale, sell all their things, and use the money to buy a gun and kill them. Instead, though, he uses the money to build a car. His name was Henry Ford.
- Mafiosos cleaning their guns, preparing to go out and threaten a man who hasn't paid his debts- this one was acted out- leading to the line, "If you don't give our money, I will shoot your head!"
- A story involving a father who died, to which I asked "What did he die of?" "He cancer." "What kind of cancer?" I smiled. "Uh..." she paused, and other students tried to mumble answers for her. "Uh... si- sk- sick cancer!" (the helpful classmate had been saying "skin cancer"). After the class laughed a bit, she changed her mind. "No, was face cancer!" she said triumphantly.
- Several students, who chose a photo of an older chef serving a woman in a crowded restaurant, with a menu above them that listed (dollar) prices for common American foods. The students explained to me that it was not as it looked, and in fact the chef was a "serial killer" (read: assassin), and each menu item was code for a different death. Death by Kalashnikov was the cheapest, at $1.85- which really meant $1,850, they explained. And the hitman was serving food in the photo because two customers in the background were FBI agents trying to prove that it wasn't really a restaurant.
- And finally, today's highlight: a story about two workers in a marble quarry in 1929 who, influenced by literature from the Soviet Union, killed their employer and then went after the government. After killing every member of Parliament and the president, they set up a new government of the more intelligent workers, and the country benefited. When asked where the story took place, they said Boston. "A marble quarry in Boston?" I asked. "Uh, well, you go outside of the city" the group corrected themselves, at which point one of their classmates chipped in- "You make a right." And then, of course, I had to ask about the Parliament. In the US.