Literally Poetic

Yesterday in class, we were enjoying the poetic works of Shel Silverstein, one of my absolute favorite authors. After reading the poem, I had all of the students use their fingers to point to the word "charming" in the last stanza.

"Kevin, can you tell me what 'charming' means?"

Kevin looked at me with a look of complete despair. It was obvious that he did not know the answer, but I thought he might be able to make a guess.

"Kevin, it's okay for you to guess. Just take a stab at it."

Taking the pencil in his right hand, he swiftly brought it down and pierced a hole in his paper.

I guess my next lesson will have to be about idioms.

Working Man

Often, my students like to ask a million questions about my personal life. I think they are just amazed that I am a real person, that I actually go places outside the school building.

Today, they have been peppering me with questions about my fiance. Ricardo kept asking questions about his job. My fiance works in financial services, and does work like bookkeeping and accounting. I explained to Ricardo that he goes to various businesses, counts their profits or income, goes to the bank, and then also pays the employees.

Ricardo responded, "So, he goes places, takes their money, and gives it back to them?"

Yup, basically.

Lost in Translation

A small group of students and I were talking about different pronunciations of words. For example, you say potato, I say potoato. You get the picture.

I brought up how my fiance and I had had a disagreement about the pronunciation of the word "coupon". I told my student Ricardo, a precious Mexican boy, that my fiance says "Q-pon" and I say "coooo-pon". I asked Ricardo, "Who is right? How do you say it?"

Without hesitation, he replied, "Los cupones."

Young Love

This post is from a friend of mine who is currently substitute teaching. He was teaching a second grade class, and on his lunch break, shared lunch with another substitute teacher who was a friend of his.

After lunch, Ty, a young chubby black boy in his second grade class asked my friend, "Mr. M., Is Miss G your girlfriend?"

"No man, she's not."

"Alright, well if you don't want her, can I have her? She is fine!"