End of the Semester......Do I have to keep coming to class?

There are forty five students right now who are writing a paper about a novel they read and don't understand. Novels are cultural....everything about a novel reaks how a group of people behavior and how other's perceive that behavior.  My students don't understand a lot of what they read, due to the fact that they are too busy speaking their mother tongue to actually try and deal with the complexity that is reading in another language.  Granted, I know how they feel. I tried to read a fourth grade children's book in a bookstore in Naples, I struggled, but after forty five minutes, and with the help of all those gloriously glossy picture, I got the idea.  Success!  I wasn't going to give up. The clerk at the bookstore was looking at me, nervously the whole time, trying to figure out what a grown woman was doing in the child's book section. 

I do everything within my power to make this an easy process, I scaffold (build the steps to help my student understand the material better) I give them outlines they need to fill in with main and minor ideas, I provide group discussion questions, I give them notes.  Still, they read, they gloss over in class, they clam up.  I groan.....nothing I do can get them to read. 

A student sent me an email at 11:59 p.m. Professor, I am lost. I don't know what to write.  This is NOT exactly encouraging people, her paper is due in two days.  What can I possibly tell this student?  Why don't they ask me questions in class? Why aren't they willing to learn from their curiousity? It all boils down to culture and what they expect from a teacher.  Groan...sigh.....what to do?

Professor, I like you. Actually, I love you!

As usual this semester, I am encouraging my students to email me if they have questions or would like to stop by for my office hour.  Many take my advice, others I don't hear from at all, except toward the end of the semester, when they show up in my office, looking like they just saw a ghost.  One such student is "Gary". Gary has been in contact with me at least once a week.  He is a good student, he's gregarious and really likes to chat after class.  He likes to email me about questions concerning the readings, cultural misunderstandings he goes through, writing issues, the list really is endless.  He's a communicator. I like that.

He emailed me last week to let me know that he let me down and that he felt terrible about it when he couldn't answer a question concerning analytical ideas in class.  That's when he dropped this interesting phrase.  "Professor, I don't want to let you down, I like you. Actually, I love you. I love you a lot.  I want you to know".  Hmmmm....now a phrase like that would get most people thinking what is going on here?
Not me, this is normal language stuff.  Happens to me all the time.  When people are learning a language and have not acquired it, they tend to write things that would normally raise eyebrows.  The problem is, my eyebrows cannot be raised anymore, I've heard it all. 

I emailed him back "Hi Gary, thanks for the email. I appreciate that you feel that you did not perform to the best of your ability yesterday in class.  Remember, we are learning and this is part of the learning process.
Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to teach the material well. 

I hit send and sit back and think of all the dumb and slightly psychotic sentences I have stitched together and let them sail out of my big mouth.   I laugh to myself and think, hey, this is language!

This girl can't be a professor, or can she?

I am very fortunate this semester to have class  near a coffee shop. I have the luxury of pulling up and jumping off my scooter just a few minutes before class, grabbing a cup of coffee and feeling pretty good about myself.  As luck would have it, I was pulling up one morning this past week to an empty meter that had my name all over it. I jumped off my bike and noticed a BU police officer on the other side of the road.  I chose to ignore the fact that the said police officer was now on his way over, across the street, looking very purposeful, heading in my direction. 

As I was wrapping my chain around the meter, he pulled up along side of me and said, "Excuse me miss, do you have a sticker on the scooter?". "Yes, every two years I have to renew it".  He looked grumpy, his face was covered with a thick moustache and great gray eyes that didn't have a spec of kindness to them.  I continued on locking up my bike.  "You know, you can't park that scooter in the street," he added with a stern bark. "Yes, I know, that's why I park it on the sidewalk".  "Scooters are very dangerous, in fact, most kids who drive them really don't know what they are doing," he chimed. He continued to go on and on about how dangerous they were, how many "kids" have no idea how to drive them. Then, he asked if I had a license.  I looked at him with a confused knitted brow "Yes, I have a license! I have had one since I've been sixteen". "Well, he said, its only been a few years and you had better beware on that thing."

A few years? Was this guy nuts? As if the fates got tired of watching this guy yank my chain, two of my students rounded the corner. "Oh good morning professor!" "Good morning guys," I said right back.  It was just then I noticed the cops face.  His face had this shocked look of unbelief and of something else I wasn't able to assess at that moment.  He sheepishly looked down and asked quietly, "are you a professor?" Yes, I said, have been for five years". "What is it you teach". "I teach writing, I specialized in academic writing. I could hear him cringing.  "My name is Pat, Pat Nunnati, and what is your name, young lady?" My name is Diana, I stated.  "You know, I love to write, I'm not so good at it, but I do love it". "That's great" I said.  "Listen, I'm sorry about the scooter thing, I thought you were a kid." "Oh, I'm no kid" I said with a forgiving smile on my face.  I shook his hand to let him know that there was no hard feelings. As I was walking away from him, he shouted out "you know, if you'd like to get together later for a coffee, I'd really enjoy that".
I waved as I disappeared into the building.  As I climbed the stairs I thought to myself, a kid, yeah, right!

Are you sure you don't want to change your name?

Of course, most mainland Chinese students who come to the American classroom, take an English name.
Unfortunately, they don't really understand that some of these names should not be attahced to an actual human. As stated in my previous posts, I have had some interesting names. Here are some of the perenially favorites:

Robin Hood
Magic
Banana
Wall
Caesar Salad
Cheese
Peter Pan
Lemon

Picture youself in my shoes:
It's a late afternoon, you turn to call on a student who just raised his hand. "Lemon, what do you think about that?" "Cheese, can you collect the papers please?"

Fall 2011-What happened to the time?

Greetings fellow teachers, cultural mavens and others who just like to read for a laugh!
I've been away from my blog for a whole year, not because I wanted to, mind you. I just became overcome with teaching, moving around to various different campuses, and of course, correcting. It just got to much! However, I am back, recovered from my weariness. I am ready to get back on the blogging horse.

I do have stories, but instead of picking up where I left off, I figured it would be better to forge ahead with the stories, the students, the mishaps, and the general mayhem that is my average day in the classroom. Forward march!

Let's start with this past summer, shall we?  This summer, I had an exceptional group of students, but not in the way you normally think of when one says "exceptional". This group was hell bent on doing as close to little as possible.  They were a group of pre grads, hoping to land in grad school with miminal effort.  I was not about to oblige them. 

Enter "Ralph" (name change here, just in case)  Ralph knew the rules. I had laid them down.  No phones on the desks during class time. I did not want to see, hear or sense a phone while I was busy conducting class.
He knew this, but for some reason, could not control his obsession with the chirping device.  As I was giving my mini - lecture, I raised my eyes to find Ralph hiding the device underneath the desk, tapping away like a crazed child with a toy gun.  I waited for him to put it down, instead, he just kept going. 

I silently walked over and gently asked him to put the phone down, pick up his bag and leave the class. He was stunned. His production and his listening skills were soarly lacking, therefore, I had to repeat myself again. Still stunned, he produced a bizarre, half baked grin on his face and proceeded to just sit at his desk.
Calmly, I asked him to step outside.  This is when it got interesting.

Once safely out in the hallway, I asked him why he was using a phone in my class.  He stammered, he started sweating, he shifted his weight from one side to the other, he looked down, then he burst out laughing! Laughing, like a hyena, with big belly laughs, as if I was up on stage at the Comedy Shack delivering one liners! And he kept laughing.  I tried to talk to him about the laughing, it just kept coming. That's when I snapped.   I screamed at the top of my lungs, STOP IT RIGHT NOW!  He did. He just went silent, the stupid grin dripped down his face into his shoes.  I explained that he needs to adhere to the rules bla bla bla.....the conversation ended. I told him to leave and come back tomorrow when he was ready to be an adult again. I thought that was the end of it all.

Unfortunately, unknown to me, the staff downstairs heard it all, as it echoed around the building.  I had to to downstairs and apologize to everyone  who heard me screaming like a nutcake.  They understood, they know the frustration.  My director pulled me aside and asked for the story. I told him, he sympathized, but asked that I try and handle it another way. I looked at him and said "Exactly what would you do with a student laughing in your face?" He looked down at the carpet, "I know, it's tough".
The next day, my student came in to speak to me about his cell phone episode. I told him laughing in someones face in America will either get you punched out or thrown out of the room.  He told me that laughing for him was like crying and that "it's just what we Chinese do".

In conclusion, the next time you see a bunch of Chinese students laughing, stop and think what that really might mean.