Your Name Here

Still lacking a cord for photo uploadation, so I'm just going to continue to say that photos are coming.

HOWEVER, today I taught students! alone! in a room! twice!

First, I had 5emes (12 -13 year olds). Then, I had 4emes (13 - 14 year olds). They're split up as 14 students to each group, 50 minutes for each class.

My first move as teacher (inspired by the aid of Morgan Miles, happy birthday!) was to have them all choose English sounding names so that I would not have to reveal to them that my french accent is inferior to their french accents, thus losing my credibility as a language teacher. I wrote names on the board and let them choose from the list or make up their own.

I decided to super cleverly not split the list of names into boy/girl categories, thereby radically shaking up gender norms, unbeknownst to them. BUT ALAS, globalization ruins all the fun and these youngsters already knew which names were for boys or girls.

When I say globalization ruins all the fun, I only sort of mean that because I still had another half of fun tacked on to this activity: me getting to choose the names for the list. I made it full of names of my loved ones, as an homage to all of you. Now, not every name got chosen, no offense, but out of the names that did, here are the ones that will interest you:

5emes

Julie, Liz, Caitrin, Melanie

Some of the more imaginative but ill-informed students chose the following:

Donald, Bob (as in Marley), Tony (as in Parker)

4emes

Jake was the soul name chosen from the board.

This class had repeats from the 5emes, as well as celebrity-inspired picks:

Tony, Bob Marley (except he chose the full name, not just "Bob", and also happens to be the most talkative student in class so every twenty seconds I am forced to say "Yes, Bob Marley?" and then have to pause so the peels of laughter can subside), Selena (as in Gomez. This decision didn't last long because a girl who chose to be "Jazmyn" kept throwing pens at "Selena" and saying 'No! I hate her! I love Justin Bieber!' so the student formerly known as Selena was cajoled into the grossly unattractive "Jenna").

After all the names were chosen, we made a list of questions on the board that they were supposed to ask each other interview-style. They would then present their partners to the class. The 5emes suggested questions in which everyone had the same answer (age, birthplace, nationality), so that by the third presentation I was daydreaming about watching paint dry.

The 4emes, however, used their questions to draw conflict lines in the classroom. This began when Jazmyn, previously mentioned for her ability to express emotion, asked that a question for the interviews be: "Do you love Justin Bieber?" In order to win her affection and rile up the class I dotted the i's with hearts.

Bob Marley, whose coiffure must have inspired Bieber's, said, "Write the answer is: No, I hate him." And then did a little hair-flip.

Jenna added, "Write the answer is: Yes, I love him."

These answers were both written on the board; I believe in the people.

Bob Marley, not satisfied with supplying hate as an option for the previous question, asked that the next question be: "Would you be happy if Justin Bieber died?" Let it be known that it took a solid three minutes to piece together that question, during which time he pooled the collective English knowledge of all the Bieber-haters in the class.

Jazmyn began foaming at the mouth so I turned the moment into a lesson about the concept of a hypothetical, like the conflict-killer I am.

The rest of each class passed without incident, except for a moment when a student asked me for the definition of "fondle" and I had a mini ethical query in which I was caught between wanting to lie and say it was something with non sexual connotations or to take the opportunity to promote sex-positive classroom behavior. Luckily, I checked her paper before responding and discovered that she meant "fondly", merci Dieu.