Yesterday, I was playing chopsticks with one of my students. I have no idea how to play chopsticks. I lost before he told me the rules. Then he yelled “You LOST, you WAYGOOK!” He was delighted with himself.
“That was pretty rude,” I said. He didn’t get it.
“But…that just means you’re not Korean!”
“I know it means foreigner,” I said. “But listen to this: ‘you got the answer wrong, you stupid Korean.’ Same thing, right?”
“Oohhh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
(This is the same student who wrote ‘waygookin’ on my arm – in case people didn’t know that I’m not Korean. I couldn’t stand out more here if I tried.)
Knowing my luck, though, that was the precise minute that my boss turned the camera on in my classroom, heard only that line, and thinks I’m a bloody racist.
Awesome.
Last week, I walked into my classroom to find that my students had been writing on the white board. Amongst the usual monsters, pictures of ‘ugly teacher’, ‘we want pizza’s’, there was, in big letters the middle of the board, the following gem:
“Yellow Hair, go back to Canada!”
….Lovely.
Today, I walked to the back of the room while my students were working on their grammar exercises, and had been for 10 minutes. “WJ,” I said to one of my students. “Where’s your pencil?”
He looked at me like a sad cow. “No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
He shrugged.
“Do you have a pencil?”
“No.”
“Were you going to ask for one?”
“No.”
“Were you planning on just sitting there for the whole three hours?
Sad cow eyes.
siiiigggghhhh
From Students:
“Ouch!.. Teacher, do I say ‘drat’ or ’shit’?”
“Clooney – what is it you are pretending to throw at me?”
“Ddong”
“Teacher! You are single, so every night, you watch 19 TV, yes?”
On the Great Wall of China:
“Hey, remember that time I couldn’t walk because I had too much sex? This is going to be way worse.”
At the bar:
“We’re not in Russia…..we’re in CHINA”
Over lunch:
“I have no problem with crotch hair. Sometimes you just have a little *cough cough* because there’s a hair at the back of your throat, but no big deal.”
“Oh yeah? Sometime I have a little *cough cough* because there’s a penis at the back of my throat*
My students, in their infinite brilliance, play this game where they make all the blood drain out of their hands. When they’ve got their hands sufficiently yellow and lifeless (and I’m sufficiently grossed out), they release the hand clenched around their wrist and squirm as all the blood goes rushing back into their fingers.
I’ve had this done to me by giggling girls. It’s quite painful and the rushing blood is, well, pretty disgusting.
Today, Frank was performing this on Martin, the biggest boy in the class. He’s also the loudest, and with every slap that Frank administered, Martin shrieked. Frank slapped harder, Martin shrieked louder, and I almost asked them if they needed handcuffs, or maybe some leather whips.
As I’m their teacher, however, that may have bordered on the vaguely inappropriate.
But then Frank, while stroking Martin’s arm with both hands to remove the blood, looked at me and said, “Teacher! Martin is very big, so I am hard!”
….
“Uh, (choke), class, could you please (wiping tears away madly in an effort not to laugh) pull out (turn around to the board in a ‘coughing fit’) pull out your grammar books?”
I don’t remember how it started, or what the context was. I was being silly with my kids, and we had progressed (degressed?) to the point of meaningless noises and grunts.
Which, really, isn’t that different from the conversation, sometimes.
I was shouting, hitting my hand over my mouth – the “ah-ah-ah!” you heard so often as a child.
One of my students looked at me, and suddenly, his face lit up. He reached below his desk, pulled out his imaginary gun, and took aim.
“Bang! Bang! Now you’re dead, you Indian!”
Filed under: quotes
student 1: “teacher! are you married?”
me: “no.”
student 2: “why? because you’re not pretty?”
My students asked me if I was pregnant again the other day.
My little ones were crowding around me – one dancing on my feet, so that I was concentrating on keeping him upright as he threw his whole weight back, one behind me with her arms cinched tight around me, a few reaching between me and the dancing boy to count my fat rolls (they have words for this in korean!), grabbing handfuls of flesh and giggling, at least two pounding on my shoulders. In the midst of all this, one of them patted my belly, much more gently than the children grabbing it (I’ll end up with tiny finger-shaped bruises, I swear), looked up at me, and said, “Teacher, baby?”
The rest got very excited, and they all started asking, “Teacher! Teacher, baby? Baby house? Is there a baby in there?”
“Yes there is,” I said. “There is a baby in there.” They went silent, excited, anticipating. “It was very delicious,” I said.
“Teacher!” they said, clearly disappointed in me.”You don’t eat baby!”
Then I got a very serious little lecture about how babies aren’t actually food.
I thought my students could no longer surprise me with the things they said in English class. I thought that after “teacher! how do you spell sniper?!” and “…and after that, snail takes poops?” and “teacher! pregnant? baby?” i was ready for anything.
i was wrong.
the other day, from a couple of adorable, highly energetic, uncontrollable twelve year olds I heard this:
“Teacher! Aiden cut my penis! Now he won’t stop touching it!”
“No, I’m only touching my own penis!”
Yesterday, I fell down. In class. In front of my students. From a stand-still. I was flat on the ground. I have a fantastic bright red bruise covering half my thigh, pictures of which I would post here if it didn’t involve showing alllll my readers (3) my pasty white thigh. This happened shortly after I huffed and puffed up 6 flights of stairs clutching my Big Mac bag.
sigh.
student: teacher! what’s wrong with your eyes?
me: i’m wearing makeup
student: oh. i thought maybe you had been punched.
