Ich bin Zungenbrechermeisterin

Today in class, I recited the "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck" tongue twister.  When I was done, there was applause.  In what other profession are talents like these appreciated?

Valentine's Day

Here's a valentine I got from one of my students:

It might be hard to read, but all of those little hearts say, "You are a we-ary good tea-cher."  We-ary, of course, doesn't mean "worn out" but is the phonetic spelling (at least in German) of "very."  But it is sort of amazing how with language you can be wrong and accurate at the same time, often without even noticing it.  I'm going to go take a nap now.

A Couple of Confessions

Somtimes, I think I have achieved pedgogical awesomeness.  I start wondering how long it will take film producers to buy the rights to my story and start pumping out inspirational movies.  Soon, I find myself thinking, the whole world will know what a great teacher I am and wish they had had such a motivational force in their lives as Ms. Meek.  The honored few who have had the chance to drink from my fountain of knowledge will go on to share their own stories of success, citing me as the sole reason.  For decades to come, whenever anyone wins an award, regardless of the field, I will be on the thank-you list, right after God but before the recipient's own mother.

I know, I know.  It's a little over the top.  But there is evidence of my greatness: English grades are going up, students who were once afraid of speaking up in class are now standing in front of the room and spouting out syntax like there's no tomorrow, mind-maps are charting whole new intellectual territories.  Sometimes, I just skip down the hallways covering students with stickers telling them "Way To Go!" and "Great Job!" I am so proud of them (and me).

But there are days when I am plagued by a completely different kind of fantasy.  I have heard that my grandmother used to say, "Lord give me strength, I could just shake their little gizzards out" in reference to children.  I totally know where she's coming from. There are times, usually when someone is defacing the class posters, or is inexplicably running around the room as though they are on fire, or is eating in class and gets condiments all over the papers they have to turn in to me, or when they throw their scissors so they get stuck in the ceiling and then expect me to get them down, (and these are all things that happen), those are the times when I start to think about strangling our future Homer Simpson-style.  But instead I just assign them tedious grammar homework, which is basically the same thing.