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.

The Quest Continued...

Yesterday in the hall:
"Hey Jonas, how are you today?"
"I am god."
Fantastic.

I Have A Quest...

There are some language mistakes that I am reluctant to correct because they have a poetic quality about them.  For example, one of the fifth graders leaves off the ending of "question," so before he asks anything, he says, "I have a quest."  I find this preface casts a certain nobleness on whatever banal query that follows, usually something along the lines of "How spell you guinea pig?" 

By the way, "How spell you guinea pig?" is the most frequent question I have been asked since coming to Germany.  I had to look it up.

FUUUUUDGE <-----Germans don't get this reference

In America, when it's your birthday, somebody else bakes you a cake and you don't have to worry about anything.  But in Germany, when it's your birthday, you are expected to bring in a treat for everyone else.  My birthday is coming up, and in the spirit of "when in Rome..." I want to make something to share with my colleagues.

Now, I have a quaint little kitchen in my apartment, but no oven, so that rules out anything that requires baking.  In my mind, that leaves preacher cookies and fudge.  Preacher cookies are out because it's hard to find peanut butter.  So, fudge.

I made the first batch today, and despite the fact that I just guesstimated all the measurements, I think it's turned out well.  I have at least accomplished to fix something with a fudge-like consistancy, and I find it hard to believe that anything with four cups of sugar, a pound of chocolate, and two bags of marshmallows could taste less than amazing.

I'm also pretty sure that this will count as bringing American culture to Germany, but I only say that because none of my colleagues seemed to know what I was talking about when I tried to explain what fudge was.  Or fudge could be rampant in Germany and I was just banging my head against the language barrier, as usual. 

We'll see.

Back To Work

Today was my first day back to work after the two week break.  Although I only worked for 3 hours, I felt extremely productive.  Today we learned about animals and animal vocabulary, my knowledge of which is impressively extensive, at least in comparison to the island's ten year old population.  Do birds have ears?  Where do lions live?  Can a turtle run?  I'm pretty sure even as a ten year old I knew the answer to all of those questions, but they popped up a lot today.  In one class, I gave a poignant lecture on all the different names for baby animals, paralyzing the students with my formidable wisdom.  I decided to spare the other classes this, although I'm sure in the long run they'll be worse off for it.

The younger students (10-12 year olds) seem to think their teachers and educational materials are infallible.  Which I guess has its upside, but whenever there's a typo on a worksheet or somebody (somebody being me) misspells something on the board, it's like the whole universe caves in.  Even in German, when you'd think the kids would have had enough experience by now to deduce from context clues what was actually meant, they seem incapable of accepting that there would be a mistake.  "Grabben? I've never seen that word before, I have no idea what it means" several of the students whisper amongst themselves.  "Well, that's because it's suppose to say 'graben' with one 'b'."  This is answered with dull stares.  "Just mark one of the 'b's out," I say.  And then after they've marked out one of the 'b's, there is a chorus of "Ach, so..."  which is German for "Oh, yeah."

I've also noticed that they rely far too heavily on rulers.  Anytime a chart or a simple line has to be drawn, a forest of hands rises up, all asking to go retrieve their rulers from their magical place of ruler safekeeping.  All of my attempts to convince them that they don't really need rulers, that they're learning English, not geometry, have failed.  I have switched my efforts to avoiding any lesson plans that might involve lines.