I have no idea what you just said!

It had come to my attention that after one semester of teaching that I was no longer a teacher. I was a councilor, a keeper of secrets, a clown, a pleading being, a giant pair of ears, a social worker, a housing advocate, a cultural Dr. Phil, Oprah (but without the money and the fame), a storyteller, a perplexed Bostonian trying to explain our bizarre behavior, and an eternal optimist.

After Valetudinarian changed his name to Miles, it became quite clear that he was....unusual.
He was rather odd, showing up to class very early, sitting at attention, looking straight ahead, as if there were some mind altering abyss to peer into. He was very formal, always greeting me and always looking off into the distance.

Our second week had started and true to form, I had the students grouped and engaged in work that they would present at the end of class. Miles would sit on the outside and peer into the group he was suppose to be involved in. When asked to join in, he stood up and starting yelling in Chinese at the girl who merely asked for his participation. Immediately, my student who had been shouted at, got up, screamed at him and bolted into the restroom.

I just stood there. What the *#! just happened? No teaching seminar, no amount of graduate training can prepare you for this. I gave the class the mandate to carry on and told Miles to sit down and keep his trap shut! I raced out the door to find my student in the girls room crying her heart out. She interpreted his remarks and now I understood why she reacted in such an explosive manner. He had told her that she was stupid, silly and had no business telling him what to do. I was stunned. So, I grabbed the verbal bull by the horn and talked her into coming back to class. I would deal with Miles! Her eyes glistened at the thought of Miles getting his! Oh, did I mention that I had to be a psychologist as well?

She believed me, she calmed down, she followed me back to class. She opened the door and raced back to her group. I asked to see Miles out in the hallway. You could hear the crickets, I swear to god! I took him in another room and ripped into him. He tried to stick up for himself, but thanks to my inablity to tolerate injustice, I shut him down.

I went back to the office that day stunned that this kind of behavior could take place in MY classroom! After I dragged myself into the office and threw myself down into the chair, I spilled my guts to my colleague. Ah, colleagues! What would the world be without them! She had more experience with Asian culture than I did. After she heard about the incident, she filled me in on the very real world of intimidation, bullying and harrassment within this culture and told me that I was in for more of this, as many of my students felt it was perfectly fine to behave in this fashion while in class. Huh? Why did they feel this kind of behavior was acceptable? The answer was simple.

There is a line in a classroom and most American students know not to cross it. What I was experiencing was a lineless classroom. These students did not know where the line was! A friendly, warm, smiling teacher meant that you can do and say anything without any kind of repercussions!

Looking back on this, this was the day I developed my Jean Claude Van Dam teaching persona!

Summer Session Group 2

As the first semester came to an end, I looked forward to starting my second semester with the program, and true to form, it was not boring!

The first day of my first class, I had the students state their name, where they are from and what (if any) English name they have chosen. My first student, a rather dower looking individual lights up and says "My name is valetudinarian". I stopped dead in my tracks looked at him and said "I'm sorry, can you repeat that again?" He did. Six times. He told me he loved this word, it was his favorite GRE word and he wanted it to be his name.

I spent the next two days trying to convince him to change his name. After I found out that his favorite word valedudinarian meant a person of a weak or sickly constitution ( I had no clue what it meant) I really kicked into overdrive to get him to change his name. I used every excuse in the book, including the one that Americans will have no idea what it means, let alone actually be able to pronounce it! Finally, with sadness, after two days of cajoling, he changed his name. He was now Miles Dyson. I had to ask where he got that name, he told me off of a website that sells cleaners.

yup, we're off to a beautiful, predictable start.

I know I said that I wanted to write this blog chronologically, but I can't help interrupting myself here. We are six weeks into the semester (Fall 09) and many of the teachers are now telling stories about their students. Here are a few of the English names that the students have chosen.

First, we have a student who has insisted on taking the name Caesar Salad, that's right, as in the Au Bon Pain $6.95 lunch. When the teacher pushed him to change his name, he remained firm stating that he liked the name, it had poetry to it, and he was completely satisfied being called Caesar Salad for the next four years.....pass the croutons!

Next, we have a student whose name is Cheese Wang. (No, that's not a typo). When pressed to change his name, he simply stated, I like cheese and I want to be called cheese. My advice to this young man is to stay away from heat lamps and watch out for giant bowls of salsa, someone might get the wrong idea!

Now back to our regularly scheduled semester!

Stop hurling yourself in front of other students!

After teaching several months, I had begun to notice that many of my Chinese students had this annoying habit. I would ask at the end of class are there any questions about homework? Nothing but crickets filled my classroom. "OK, see you all tomorrow". I would turn to erase the board and upon turning once again, I would see at least ten of my students at the desk with questions about (what else?) their homework! So I would patiently explain the homework assignment again...and again...and again. That wasn't the annoying part.

The annoying part was when a student would hurl him or herself in front of another student who had already started asking me a question. I found this rude, I got aggrevated and finally, after many days of witnessing this behavior, I asked! "Guys, why do you do this?" Why can't you wait until your fellow classmate has finished talking to me." We are China, too many peoples, you need important ways to make peoples understand important ways." Huh?
I asked again, so they explained again. Turns out, after several attempts to explain it, I got it. They come from a land of 1.3 billion people, this is the kind of behavior that takes place there. Pushing, shoving, interuppting, cutting lines, cheating, all in the name of getting ahead of someone else...not only is it accepted, it is encouraged!

The next day I decided I needed to address this, so I did. According to the cultural rules of the U.S. if you try any of these behaviors in an American classroom, you'll be thought of as rude, you'll be shunned and if you really pissed someone off, you might get a swift kick to the family jewels.... I suddenly realized that I used the phrase family jewels. "Great", I thought as I turned around to write on the board, "how do I explain this one?"

New words in the English language..brought to you by young, confused foreign students!

Below, for your English dictionary pleasure, are words that are being spoken and written by students who are trying to use this language. These words have appeared on tests, quizzes and other tools used to gauge whether or not a student can use the word functionally.

Idiocratic- a word used to describe a person who is completely incapable of doing anything while claiming to work for a large government agency. Ex- He's so idiocratic, it's beyond me why they don't fire his butt!

Innovention- this is a word used to describe something that has been thought of, brought to life, and then bought up by Microsoft. Think of your own example, there's a ton of them!

Dramastic-a word used to describe a drama queen.
Ex-Oh, god, why is she so dramastic, I mean, really! Can't she just get a grip!

I'm going to write a compare and contrast essay.....about you!

I schlepped my bag into the office and dropped it down as if it was 3,000 pounds. I slumped into my chair with a groan. My colleague looked at me with a look of chagrin. "What's wrong?" I said reluctanly. She breathed in "Peter Pan is writing an essay about the two of us!" "WHAT" "NO"
"He can't be?" "Oh, he is", she stated with certainty. My colleague and I both taught him, she had him for Reading and Writing and I had him for a class called Culture and Communication. "This can't be good", I moaned. She continued "I guess the other students tried to talk him out of it, but he couldn't be pursuaded." Sure enough, two weeks later, the essay appeared. Here is an excerpt:

"The first teacher I want to talk about teaches me Culture and Communication. She is American but with the Italian blood. What a tall and slim lady! She is passionate. She speaks with great fervor. She put her words into vivid movement. She is enthusiastic. She is cordial and makes you excited about what you are learning. She was that kind of teacher who can easily draw your attention and loaded everything needed into your mind (including the way of her teaching) right away. I remember in the class, she videotaped our presentation in order to prove our speaking skills; she held a debate to help develop our critical thinking; she also gave a lot of assignments which required us do some investigation in or outside the campus. All these make you exciting and meanwhile brought about pressure on your academic studying. In Diana’s class, she might first help you discover yourself then lead you to discover what she wants to interpret. She is fire and she makes you feel the fire."

How exactly do you interpret that?

Sneezing is a laughable offense

It is true that one man's habit is another man's amusement. Case in point: sneezing. Yes, sneezing. The act that every human, animal and amoeba are forced to engage in when something has clogged the ventilation systems.

We were in class and not too long before all my students came down with an illness or two. The first three weeks are always the worst. They are eating strange food, injesting water with weird microbes and generally partying till they puke, which at some point within the first three weeks, comes back to haunt them. The sneezing starts around this time, so this is when I start with the "God bless you!" At first, they just collectively laughed every time I said it, out loud, with an obvious tinge of amusment. Then, slowly as it kept happening, it became somewhat of an irritation to me. So, getting up my nerve, I asked one day. "Guys, why is it every time I say God bless you after you sneeze, you all laugh?" Robin Hood, King of English forest stated dryly, "It's because we don't do that after someone sneezes, we don't believe in God, we are communists. It suddenly hit me, my god, they are communists! There is no God according to this ideaology, so of course this is going to be outrageous to them! I proceeded to then explain the whole sneezing story, as it had been relayed to me. They listened in amusement. Nothing much was said after that. The chuckles continued now and again after someone had let a good one rip, but the mystery of sneezing had lost its allure. Like all other cultural differences, eventually the difference becomes the norm...and we all just reach for a tissue!