Great Teacher A-Chan

This week I was reviewing comparitive sentences with the ninensei (e.g. 'The elephant is bigger than the cat'). As an activity students were given cards featuring two objects (with the names written beneath to make it easier), which they had to then write a comparitive sentence about using the English they'd been practising. This is pretty basic stuff, so most of them were fine with it.

One boy wrote the simple sentence 'the pen is longer than the pencil', however due to improper pacing, it really did look like he'd written 'the penis longer than the pencil'. His classmate pointed this out, but not wanting to be proven wrong, the writer insisted he'd done it on purpose, and declared that he was talking about his own equipment. This left three boys cacking themselves at the one adamantly proclaiming (complete with gestures, of course) 'Penis longer than pencil! My penis! Penis longer than pencil!'

Another boy was given a card featuring the Leaning Tower and the (Sydney) Opera House. Using any English he could think of to conjoin the two, he came up with 'The Leaning Tower is taller than the Phantom of the Opera House' (The Phantom of the Opera is currently touring in Kansai).

Wandering back to the staffroom after class, I was distracted by a horrendous shrieking from a gaggle of sannensei girls. This is nothing unusual, but you never know what these girls are up to, so I moseyed over to take a peek. a half-dozen girls had formed a circle around another two, and were screaming something along the lines of 'do it! DO IT!'. When I quietly tapped one girl on the shoulder to ask what the fuss was about, she informed me that they were trying to convince the two girls to kiss.

Now, if I'd gotten my degree in teaching, I'm sure I would've had some kind of ethical guideline for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, my degree is in science.

I joined in their prodding, calling out 'Do it! Do it! ..... I'LL GIVE YOU A SEAL!'

Now, what you should know, is that in junior high, seals (stickers) are everything. Students will do damn near anything for a seal. I always keep some in my pocket so I can ask kids English questions when I bump into them. If I had a car I bet I could get a different kid each day to wash and wax it, without ever forking out more than a couple of shiny stickers.

The two girls in question were suitably surprised to see me there, and furthermore, encouraging them to kiss. Apparently though, they misunderstood my meaning, because they then readily attempted to kiss me to get a seal (I should probably mention at this point that one of the girls in question has a habit of regularly feeling me up from behind. Nothing offensive, just gentle hugging and occasional caressing). By that point even I could figure out this was beyond the scope of appropriate student/teacher relations, so had to deny the girls. Still determined to get a seal, however, they asked if I could at least give them an English question.

My question for the day was 'What is your father's name?'. I certainly wasn't expecting the first girl I asked to respond 'No. I have no father'. Not sure what to do, I still gave her the seal (she used correct English after all), and a very sympathetic look with a pat on the shoulder. The other students, who always have a tendency to just copy the first student's answer, thus informed me that none of them had fathers. Riiiiiiiiiiighht. Well, save one girl, who, when asked 'What is your father's name?' gave me a thumbs-up with an enthusiastic 'YES!'

Posted by a-chan on Sunday, February 25, 2007 at 10:25 PM | Permalink