Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Who knew Pop Culture would turn out to be such a naughty class?
In spite of the fact that I've only had 2-3 students all semester, which is really not enough to justify keeping a class, Wake Tech has been letting me teach an ESL/Pop Culture class, and it's been the most fun class I've ever taught. My students are really advanced, which is quite refreshing after having taught the level 1 class for so long before. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE level 1. They come in, and you have this conversation:
Teacher: What's your name?
Student: Yes.
Teacher: Where are you from?
Student: Yes.
Or the more advanced ones have this conversation:
Teacher: What's your name?
Student: Jose Armando Bautista Perez de Jesus
Teacher: Where are you from?
Student: My from is Mexico.
And while both of these conversations are precious and highly entertaining, it's really nice to be able to have this conversation, which I had yesterday while teaching the proper use of "what's-his-face" (or "what's-her-face"):
Me: (talking about one of my students) I was talking to what's-his-face yesterday. You know, the Japanese guy in my pop culture class.
Japanese Student: Oh, you mean the really funny, handsome one?
So needless to say, I really love teaching this class, but yesterday's lesson had me blushing for the whole three hours. My students requested that I do a lesson on slang words and phrases associated with body parts. I agreed to do this, but I said I'd skip the dirty ones. They said, "Actually, we think it's important to know those too." They said that sometimes they think people are using slang to insult or make fun of them, and since they don't understand, they just smile, and not wanting my students to be taken advantage of, I agreed to teach them even the dirty words. I mean, they're my age or older, and if they wanted to know these words so they could use them, they'd have already learned them. They really just wanted to know them for defensive purposes, so I didn't see any harm in it. We used Michelangelo's statue of David and Boticelli's The Birth of Venus for reference and labelling, and we finished out the class by looking at the lyrics to "My Humps," but we didn't have time to listen to it.
I'm thinking of doing another lesson on bodily function slang, but I don't know about that one. I'm not sure I could fill up three hours with it. And I think I'll do a lesson on urban legends and one on internet fads (i.e. blogging, myspace, etc.), but I need another idea or two to get me through the end of the semester. Any suggestions?
Teacher: What's your name?
Student: Yes.
Teacher: Where are you from?
Student: Yes.
Or the more advanced ones have this conversation:
Teacher: What's your name?
Student: Jose Armando Bautista Perez de Jesus
Teacher: Where are you from?
Student: My from is Mexico.
And while both of these conversations are precious and highly entertaining, it's really nice to be able to have this conversation, which I had yesterday while teaching the proper use of "what's-his-face" (or "what's-her-face"):
Me: (talking about one of my students) I was talking to what's-his-face yesterday. You know, the Japanese guy in my pop culture class.
Japanese Student: Oh, you mean the really funny, handsome one?
So needless to say, I really love teaching this class, but yesterday's lesson had me blushing for the whole three hours. My students requested that I do a lesson on slang words and phrases associated with body parts. I agreed to do this, but I said I'd skip the dirty ones. They said, "Actually, we think it's important to know those too." They said that sometimes they think people are using slang to insult or make fun of them, and since they don't understand, they just smile, and not wanting my students to be taken advantage of, I agreed to teach them even the dirty words. I mean, they're my age or older, and if they wanted to know these words so they could use them, they'd have already learned them. They really just wanted to know them for defensive purposes, so I didn't see any harm in it. We used Michelangelo's statue of David and Boticelli's The Birth of Venus for reference and labelling, and we finished out the class by looking at the lyrics to "My Humps," but we didn't have time to listen to it.
I'm thinking of doing another lesson on bodily function slang, but I don't know about that one. I'm not sure I could fill up three hours with it. And I think I'll do a lesson on urban legends and one on internet fads (i.e. blogging, myspace, etc.), but I need another idea or two to get me through the end of the semester. Any suggestions?
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You actually get paid to do this???