67. Explain why Iranians in the late 1970s wanted to get rid of the shah and begin an Islamist republic (give at least 3 specific reasons). (4 points)
because the Iraninans were belligerent & they didn't want the shah they wanted a islamic republic
That's his complete answer. Oof.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
ESL moment of the week.
"My brother is afraid of retorted people because he doesn't know how they can twist like that."
Context: Vocabulary portion of a quiz, in which the vocabulary word "retorted" was to be used in a sentence in some way that shows the student knows what the word means. It's worth noting that another word in the vocabulary list for this week was "contorted." But still.
Context: Vocabulary portion of a quiz, in which the vocabulary word "retorted" was to be used in a sentence in some way that shows the student knows what the word means. It's worth noting that another word in the vocabulary list for this week was "contorted." But still.
Friday, October 21, 2011
ESL moment of the... last little while...
"My favorite movie is: Charlie and the Chocolate Fabric."
-M., 11th grade
(For the record, this was included in a colon-use exercise, and she did not use a colon correctly. The material that comes before the colon should be able to stand on its own.)
-M., 11th grade
(For the record, this was included in a colon-use exercise, and she did not use a colon correctly. The material that comes before the colon should be able to stand on its own.)
Monday, September 12, 2011
...smashing ice into tiny, little pieces
I don't recall if I've blogged on the concept of chapel at IST before. If I have, or if you have talked to me about it in the last 2 years, I'm sure you didn't hear great things. I've never been thrilled with chapel down here. I don't exactly know how to pinpoint what's wrong, but it's got something to do with a not-so-prevalent faith life of many IST students (rendering chapel "useless" to, or at least not worth attention of a high percentage of students) coupled with a general lack of focus for messages and content (this is opinion based upon the past 2 years; not enough time has elapsed to judge on this year).
One of the biggest problems with high school chapel is the length: a full 42 minute class period (once a week) is allotted for chapel. That's twice as long as chapel at Calvin (though, admittedly, Calvin has chapel every day) and almost twice as long as the (thrice weekly) chapel I thoroughly enjoyed at Holland Christian High School. I think a 20-25 minute break in the middle of the day is about perfect to set itself off as a special time to honor God, but not so long as to get restless as teenagers are wont to do. 42 minutes is long for me, even.
This year, they've tried to offset this length of time by beginning with music videos playing as students come in and doing a couple "Ice Breaker" games before anything spiritual happens (please read with a sense of verbal irony on my part). Ice breakers are meant to do what they say - break the ice among people who may not know each other or are unfamiliar with each other. They're not something that is used week after week among students who've know each other for years. Maybe I'm just getting caught up in nomenclature, but trust me, the ice has been broken. Many, many times.
At any rate, these activities that take up usually half of the period have included Human Bingo, an identify-the-teacher-from-a-high-school-photo game (spread over 2 weeks), and karaoke. Today, as was common for chapels of last year, the activity was of a style you'd see on the TV show "Minute to Win It:" a basic challenge to be completed in 60 seconds or less. This week, four students sat up on stage, leaned their heads way back, and had an Oreo cookie placed on their forehead. The goal was to get the Oreo from forehead to mouth without using hands (quite difficult - try it!)(Remember, this is the weekly chapel.) None of the students succeeded, and in fact, most of them dropped the cookies off their faces several times and replaced them before the minute was over.
Next, of course, Mr. Barahona suggested the teachers may do better. So let's get some teachers up there! Show that they're not frumpy and all that! Make them look silly! I sang in the karaoke last week, so I wasn't inclined to volunteer (I don't really want to be THAT teacher) despite several students pressuring me to go up. But the third chair remained unfilled. Finally, I said to heck with it and went up (secretly, I wanted to see if I could do it, but not necessarily in that context). I looked skyward, felt the cookie's placement, waited for the countdown, and proceeded to wiggle my forehead muscles.
The Oreo inched toward my eye socket, then suddenly was there. My chocolate wafer and cream monocle twitched with my eyelid. I tested the angles and (literal) gravity of the situation, and realized a slight flick of the head could effectively flip the cookie, but I didn't want to overdo it and send the Oreo to the floor. I had one shot. My mouth instinctively opened with concentration, my neck muscles flexed, and the cookie fairly magnetically shot from eye to mouth.
I'd done it. The other teachers were still struggling, getting closer than the students had, but perhaps 20 or 25 seconds in, the contest was over as a cheer resounded from the 11th and 12th graders in the chapel. The Oreo crumbled under the triumphant closing of my jaws. I returned to my seat, proud of myself and ready to sing with the praise band that was coming up to begin the more chapel-ish protion of chapel.
Now, I do have to make sure to note that I'm much more pleased with chapel thus far this year than at pretty much any point in the last two years. I attribute that largely to the group of students that are in 11th and 12 grade this year (a truly solid set of 140 or so kids) and no longer having the terribly disrespectful class of 2011 in that context any more. I'm hopeful and optimistic for this year, in ways that extend beyond my classroom, where things already feel very positive.
Now I have just one more day before a 5 day Independence Day break. Nicaragua, here we come!
One of the biggest problems with high school chapel is the length: a full 42 minute class period (once a week) is allotted for chapel. That's twice as long as chapel at Calvin (though, admittedly, Calvin has chapel every day) and almost twice as long as the (thrice weekly) chapel I thoroughly enjoyed at Holland Christian High School. I think a 20-25 minute break in the middle of the day is about perfect to set itself off as a special time to honor God, but not so long as to get restless as teenagers are wont to do. 42 minutes is long for me, even.
This year, they've tried to offset this length of time by beginning with music videos playing as students come in and doing a couple "Ice Breaker" games before anything spiritual happens (please read with a sense of verbal irony on my part). Ice breakers are meant to do what they say - break the ice among people who may not know each other or are unfamiliar with each other. They're not something that is used week after week among students who've know each other for years. Maybe I'm just getting caught up in nomenclature, but trust me, the ice has been broken. Many, many times.
At any rate, these activities that take up usually half of the period have included Human Bingo, an identify-the-teacher-from-a-high-school-photo game (spread over 2 weeks), and karaoke. Today, as was common for chapels of last year, the activity was of a style you'd see on the TV show "Minute to Win It:" a basic challenge to be completed in 60 seconds or less. This week, four students sat up on stage, leaned their heads way back, and had an Oreo cookie placed on their forehead. The goal was to get the Oreo from forehead to mouth without using hands (quite difficult - try it!)(Remember, this is the weekly chapel.) None of the students succeeded, and in fact, most of them dropped the cookies off their faces several times and replaced them before the minute was over.
Next, of course, Mr. Barahona suggested the teachers may do better. So let's get some teachers up there! Show that they're not frumpy and all that! Make them look silly! I sang in the karaoke last week, so I wasn't inclined to volunteer (I don't really want to be THAT teacher) despite several students pressuring me to go up. But the third chair remained unfilled. Finally, I said to heck with it and went up (secretly, I wanted to see if I could do it, but not necessarily in that context). I looked skyward, felt the cookie's placement, waited for the countdown, and proceeded to wiggle my forehead muscles.
The Oreo inched toward my eye socket, then suddenly was there. My chocolate wafer and cream monocle twitched with my eyelid. I tested the angles and (literal) gravity of the situation, and realized a slight flick of the head could effectively flip the cookie, but I didn't want to overdo it and send the Oreo to the floor. I had one shot. My mouth instinctively opened with concentration, my neck muscles flexed, and the cookie fairly magnetically shot from eye to mouth.
I'd done it. The other teachers were still struggling, getting closer than the students had, but perhaps 20 or 25 seconds in, the contest was over as a cheer resounded from the 11th and 12th graders in the chapel. The Oreo crumbled under the triumphant closing of my jaws. I returned to my seat, proud of myself and ready to sing with the praise band that was coming up to begin the more chapel-ish protion of chapel.
Now, I do have to make sure to note that I'm much more pleased with chapel thus far this year than at pretty much any point in the last two years. I attribute that largely to the group of students that are in 11th and 12 grade this year (a truly solid set of 140 or so kids) and no longer having the terribly disrespectful class of 2011 in that context any more. I'm hopeful and optimistic for this year, in ways that extend beyond my classroom, where things already feel very positive.
Now I have just one more day before a 5 day Independence Day break. Nicaragua, here we come!
Friday, September 9, 2011
...celebrating children
In Honduras, Mother's Day is celebrated (as far as I have seen) on the same day as in the United States. Father's Day, rather than the month after Mother's Day, comes the month before, in April. (Every bulletin board at IST seems to include a tie of some kind in its decoration this time of year...that's what a father is, after all - a guy who wears a tie.) But a further difference can be found in that Honduras has a specific day set aside to celebrate CHILDREN in addition to Moms and Dads. That day is today. I think. At least today is the day that International School celebrates it.
Children's Day, or Dia de Niños, is one of the banes of existence for most middle and high school teachers at IST. It's marked with a program in the last hour or so of school, where the entire elementary school gathers in the polideportivo (essentially an outdoor gymnasium with a roof over it) and...stuff happens. The poli is located directly next to the MS/HS building, with windows (perpetually open this time of year due to the heat) looking out over it. This program is LOUD. Comically loud. Music is blaring such that one cannot hear the average student speak in a typical classroom setting. You hear the emcees voice carrying into your classroom much better than your own voice - good luck maintaining attention of your class. Kiddos are encouraged to cheer at pretty much any given opportunity, and if there's one thing all kiddos are good at, it's screaming loudly.
To put it plainly, teaching is essentially impossible. (I'm blessed this year to not have to teach on Friday afternoons, thus avoiding this and most other similar party afternoons - yes, there are several over the course of the year.) Sure, there's no other place to put such a hubbub - IST is not blessed with an abundance of space (due to poor planning ahead, but that's not for this post), and in situations like that, sacrifices should be expected to be made. OK. I'll grant that. But the problem is really that we (at least in the high school; I can't speak for the middle school) were NEVER informed that it would be happening. This is typical. Often, large, well-publicized events that will actually affect our teaching are never announced to us in the high school, so we are unable to plan ahead to maybe have a strategy to deal with excessive noise outside our classrooms (more excessive, that is, than normal - there's constantly NOISE going on all over the school, but days like this stand out, to be sure).
When this same thing happened my first year, I was livid. I found out about Children's Day this year through facebook last night. Though I knew it wasn't personally going to affect me, I made sure to inform the new teachers on my side of the school (which is most affected by noise from the poli). They told me, "Well, I teach right by the chapel anyway; I'm used to it." I tried to express the gravity of the situation, that this was no muffled guitar noodling - this was CHILDREN'S DAY, but I guess you really can't understand it until you experience it. This they were able to do around 1:30, when the music and cheering began in earnest.
Though I regard Children's Day with massive skepticism, I can't help but watch car accidents as I drive past either. As I didn't have to teach, I meandered my way down to observe the festivities, quickly recoiling in horror. Children's Day is appalling.
The first thing I noticed was the Pepsi display up - I guess Children's Day is corporately sponsored these days? - with two random women in pink shirts standing in front of the display, not clearly there for any purpose. A surprising number of elementary kids were dressed as your favorite Disney princesses and Pixar characters: I recall Snow White, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Incredible, Jessie from Toy Story 2 and 3, and at least a Batman and another generic princess thown in for good measure. Naturally. Children's Day, like most other days, is an excuse to wear costumes in Honduras. Several of the Honduran teachers were dressed up in student uniforms, although these uniforms were not designed with adult bodies in mind. Suffice it to say, jumpers did not cover as much leg as they are mandated on female students. There were sack races, or at least I thought where things were heading - there was so much build up, and I saw teachers getting into bags, but I looked away and the teachers were coming back before I realized it. They played an audiobook style story of Cinderella in Spanish over the loudspeakers, with no visual aspect going on. That part lost me and most of the kids. Popcorn and sno-cones were flowing with abandon. Blown bubbles filled the atmosphere. With any excuse, kids got up to run around and push their teachers up to the front to "volunteer" them for games like the sack race. Dances, both choreographed and spontaneous, punctuated the opening of the program, with hundreds of little arms flailing across the poli. The non-cynical part of me can see the joy and excitement that permeated the event on the part of the children, and enjoyed chuckling at the odd kid squirming on the ground on his back and the kid who sat in the middle of the basketball court with no one else around him within 15 or 20 feet in any direction.
Alas, there's a healthy, pulsating cynical side to me, as you well all know. And that cynical side was horrified by the spectacle. That cynical side looked at the 6th grade classes (living life for the first time without Children's Day and other such festivals) smushed against or hanging out of their classroom windows for the entire program, rendering the afternoon devoid of education. That cynical side sees how coddled children are in general in this country and questions the need to specifically set aside a day to coddle them even more. That cynical side can't get past hearing of one classroom that asked the teacher, "What are you doing for us today? Did you bring a piñata?" only to be scandalized upon hearing that the day was still to be filled with lessons.
Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. They should be celebrated. I just find myself very skeptical of spectacles, such as is found on days like today.
Children's Day, or Dia de Niños, is one of the banes of existence for most middle and high school teachers at IST. It's marked with a program in the last hour or so of school, where the entire elementary school gathers in the polideportivo (essentially an outdoor gymnasium with a roof over it) and...stuff happens. The poli is located directly next to the MS/HS building, with windows (perpetually open this time of year due to the heat) looking out over it. This program is LOUD. Comically loud. Music is blaring such that one cannot hear the average student speak in a typical classroom setting. You hear the emcees voice carrying into your classroom much better than your own voice - good luck maintaining attention of your class. Kiddos are encouraged to cheer at pretty much any given opportunity, and if there's one thing all kiddos are good at, it's screaming loudly.
To put it plainly, teaching is essentially impossible. (I'm blessed this year to not have to teach on Friday afternoons, thus avoiding this and most other similar party afternoons - yes, there are several over the course of the year.) Sure, there's no other place to put such a hubbub - IST is not blessed with an abundance of space (due to poor planning ahead, but that's not for this post), and in situations like that, sacrifices should be expected to be made. OK. I'll grant that. But the problem is really that we (at least in the high school; I can't speak for the middle school) were NEVER informed that it would be happening. This is typical. Often, large, well-publicized events that will actually affect our teaching are never announced to us in the high school, so we are unable to plan ahead to maybe have a strategy to deal with excessive noise outside our classrooms (more excessive, that is, than normal - there's constantly NOISE going on all over the school, but days like this stand out, to be sure).
When this same thing happened my first year, I was livid. I found out about Children's Day this year through facebook last night. Though I knew it wasn't personally going to affect me, I made sure to inform the new teachers on my side of the school (which is most affected by noise from the poli). They told me, "Well, I teach right by the chapel anyway; I'm used to it." I tried to express the gravity of the situation, that this was no muffled guitar noodling - this was CHILDREN'S DAY, but I guess you really can't understand it until you experience it. This they were able to do around 1:30, when the music and cheering began in earnest.
Though I regard Children's Day with massive skepticism, I can't help but watch car accidents as I drive past either. As I didn't have to teach, I meandered my way down to observe the festivities, quickly recoiling in horror. Children's Day is appalling.
The first thing I noticed was the Pepsi display up - I guess Children's Day is corporately sponsored these days? - with two random women in pink shirts standing in front of the display, not clearly there for any purpose. A surprising number of elementary kids were dressed as your favorite Disney princesses and Pixar characters: I recall Snow White, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Incredible, Jessie from Toy Story 2 and 3, and at least a Batman and another generic princess thown in for good measure. Naturally. Children's Day, like most other days, is an excuse to wear costumes in Honduras. Several of the Honduran teachers were dressed up in student uniforms, although these uniforms were not designed with adult bodies in mind. Suffice it to say, jumpers did not cover as much leg as they are mandated on female students. There were sack races, or at least I thought where things were heading - there was so much build up, and I saw teachers getting into bags, but I looked away and the teachers were coming back before I realized it. They played an audiobook style story of Cinderella in Spanish over the loudspeakers, with no visual aspect going on. That part lost me and most of the kids. Popcorn and sno-cones were flowing with abandon. Blown bubbles filled the atmosphere. With any excuse, kids got up to run around and push their teachers up to the front to "volunteer" them for games like the sack race. Dances, both choreographed and spontaneous, punctuated the opening of the program, with hundreds of little arms flailing across the poli. The non-cynical part of me can see the joy and excitement that permeated the event on the part of the children, and enjoyed chuckling at the odd kid squirming on the ground on his back and the kid who sat in the middle of the basketball court with no one else around him within 15 or 20 feet in any direction.
Alas, there's a healthy, pulsating cynical side to me, as you well all know. And that cynical side was horrified by the spectacle. That cynical side looked at the 6th grade classes (living life for the first time without Children's Day and other such festivals) smushed against or hanging out of their classroom windows for the entire program, rendering the afternoon devoid of education. That cynical side sees how coddled children are in general in this country and questions the need to specifically set aside a day to coddle them even more. That cynical side can't get past hearing of one classroom that asked the teacher, "What are you doing for us today? Did you bring a piñata?" only to be scandalized upon hearing that the day was still to be filled with lessons.
Don't get me wrong. Kids are great. They should be celebrated. I just find myself very skeptical of spectacles, such as is found on days like today.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
...with a reputation that precedes me
So first I must apologize for my delinquency in posting. This is certainly my longest hiatus in blogging - on this particular blog, at least - and I don't plan on repeating it until I draw it to a close (which will happen when I am certain my time in Honduras is drawing to a close itself). In fact, I hope I can revitalize my blogging with a fervor not yet seen on "I May Be in Honduras..." Now that the apology is out of the way, let's move on...
I just began my third year of teaching. Year 3, Day 1 was a half day, with an assembly on top of it, cutting classes down to about 15 minutes apiece. Fortunately, I have 2-period blocks with each of my 3 11th grade classes, giving me close to 34 minutes of time with each, which is actually long enough to do something! I opened with my trademark joking around and looking/acting awkward to make the kids laugh, then moved into a devotional surrounding Haggai 2:4-5, in which Haggai is talking to Zerubbabel and the Israelites as they work to rebuild the Temple after the Babylonian exlile: through him, the Lord tells them to be strong and work, rather than fear the magnitude of their undertaking, for He is with them and His Spirit is among them. I related this to the undertaking (magnitudes may vary) for each of the students in my three sections to ace, or merely pass, or merely survive their 11th grade year and wind up as seniors. I don't devotionalize often (something I hope to improve this year as I have a more regular schedule), and even when I do, it doesn't feel authentic all the time. But boy did it today. I could feel God in what I was giving to my students. Please pray that this can continue, that I can continue to effectively shine His light on my students and coworkers.
All in all, it was a successful first day. I've been back in Hondu for 9 days, or rather this is my 10th day in the country, or whatever - I arrived on the 14th, and today's the 23rd. Got it. It has felt surprisingly good to be back. I'm living in the same, rather great house, and it just feels in many ways like last year never quit, and that's a good thing for someone who's been frustrated with his transient life situation for the last 7 years and desires to just settle somewhere long-term. One of my 2 roommates is new, and Ben is a great guy to live with me and Matt, who has already been established as a great guy through a year of roommatehood. Additionally, the rest of the community, new and old, is a great group of people. I have already valued the time I've been able to spend with my old friends, and the new crowd is chock full of fun folks. Couple that with being used to the quirks and frustrations of life in Honduras, and I'm able to apporach these days from a thankfully similar mindset as I do the days of summer.
Speaking of summer, it was one of the best on record. Seriously. Everything has been going great for the last 3 months or so. Compare this stretch with the equivalent months of 2009, where I was legitimately, if not officially clinically, depressed, and you have one of those discrepancies that can only be attributed to God working in various areas of my life. But back to summer: I was able to make some worthwhile and gratifying purchases, including the new laptop I'm typing on, some trendy and thrifty additions to my wardrobe, and some exciting new books, albums, and DVDs. I saw some interesting movies and plays, managed to make it out to the beach a couple of times, spent a good deal of time with important friends who are still in the West Michigan area or who were able to make it up at some point during my stay, and I went to 2 excellent concerts: Bon Iver and the Decemberists, as well as 2 major league baseball games, including my beloved Detroit Tigers. Most importantly, though would be the start of a new and extremely promising relationship. That dominated my time home, and it dominates much of my thoughts down here (fortunately, I have work to distract me at intervals). Long distance is not fun, though I am very confident of everything working out positively :)
(I know I'm jumping back and forth from topic to topic, but there wasn't a good place to stick this in the first-day paragraph with my tangential writing style.) This year's students have come to me with a reputation. Perhaps one of the best reputations I've heard of for a grade level - from both teachers who had them in 9th grade AND teachers who have them last year. And while the first day is not necessarily an accurate portrayal of 3 classes of 11th graders, I can see that reputation proving itself. Talk about gratifying. Certainly, I can see students who may give me challenges, but I think I'm more than prepared to handle any behavioral/management issues gracefully at this point.
Also, at this point in my career, I am pleased to have a fairly solid reputation as a teacher built up over my past two years, especially the past year. I feel that this only sets me up for more success. My students are expecting to enjoy my class, at least somewhat. I don't feel pressure to entertain, or amuse, but I think I'm set up to have an entertaining, amusing, and most importantly insightful class. I may not know many individual students from this year yet, but seeing them in my room, responding to what I was saying, felt as though I was talking to students who've already had me for a month, because they know a fair amount about me. That's going to be a tough thing to give up when it does come time for me to move on to the next step in my life.
I don't want my first post in 4.5 months to be a real lunker, even though there's plenty to talk about. Rather, I'll try to make up for it in more frequent posts in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say, life is remarkably positive right now. It feels good to be back, in more ways than one.
I just began my third year of teaching. Year 3, Day 1 was a half day, with an assembly on top of it, cutting classes down to about 15 minutes apiece. Fortunately, I have 2-period blocks with each of my 3 11th grade classes, giving me close to 34 minutes of time with each, which is actually long enough to do something! I opened with my trademark joking around and looking/acting awkward to make the kids laugh, then moved into a devotional surrounding Haggai 2:4-5, in which Haggai is talking to Zerubbabel and the Israelites as they work to rebuild the Temple after the Babylonian exlile: through him, the Lord tells them to be strong and work, rather than fear the magnitude of their undertaking, for He is with them and His Spirit is among them. I related this to the undertaking (magnitudes may vary) for each of the students in my three sections to ace, or merely pass, or merely survive their 11th grade year and wind up as seniors. I don't devotionalize often (something I hope to improve this year as I have a more regular schedule), and even when I do, it doesn't feel authentic all the time. But boy did it today. I could feel God in what I was giving to my students. Please pray that this can continue, that I can continue to effectively shine His light on my students and coworkers.
All in all, it was a successful first day. I've been back in Hondu for 9 days, or rather this is my 10th day in the country, or whatever - I arrived on the 14th, and today's the 23rd. Got it. It has felt surprisingly good to be back. I'm living in the same, rather great house, and it just feels in many ways like last year never quit, and that's a good thing for someone who's been frustrated with his transient life situation for the last 7 years and desires to just settle somewhere long-term. One of my 2 roommates is new, and Ben is a great guy to live with me and Matt, who has already been established as a great guy through a year of roommatehood. Additionally, the rest of the community, new and old, is a great group of people. I have already valued the time I've been able to spend with my old friends, and the new crowd is chock full of fun folks. Couple that with being used to the quirks and frustrations of life in Honduras, and I'm able to apporach these days from a thankfully similar mindset as I do the days of summer.
Speaking of summer, it was one of the best on record. Seriously. Everything has been going great for the last 3 months or so. Compare this stretch with the equivalent months of 2009, where I was legitimately, if not officially clinically, depressed, and you have one of those discrepancies that can only be attributed to God working in various areas of my life. But back to summer: I was able to make some worthwhile and gratifying purchases, including the new laptop I'm typing on, some trendy and thrifty additions to my wardrobe, and some exciting new books, albums, and DVDs. I saw some interesting movies and plays, managed to make it out to the beach a couple of times, spent a good deal of time with important friends who are still in the West Michigan area or who were able to make it up at some point during my stay, and I went to 2 excellent concerts: Bon Iver and the Decemberists, as well as 2 major league baseball games, including my beloved Detroit Tigers. Most importantly, though would be the start of a new and extremely promising relationship. That dominated my time home, and it dominates much of my thoughts down here (fortunately, I have work to distract me at intervals). Long distance is not fun, though I am very confident of everything working out positively :)
(I know I'm jumping back and forth from topic to topic, but there wasn't a good place to stick this in the first-day paragraph with my tangential writing style.) This year's students have come to me with a reputation. Perhaps one of the best reputations I've heard of for a grade level - from both teachers who had them in 9th grade AND teachers who have them last year. And while the first day is not necessarily an accurate portrayal of 3 classes of 11th graders, I can see that reputation proving itself. Talk about gratifying. Certainly, I can see students who may give me challenges, but I think I'm more than prepared to handle any behavioral/management issues gracefully at this point.
Also, at this point in my career, I am pleased to have a fairly solid reputation as a teacher built up over my past two years, especially the past year. I feel that this only sets me up for more success. My students are expecting to enjoy my class, at least somewhat. I don't feel pressure to entertain, or amuse, but I think I'm set up to have an entertaining, amusing, and most importantly insightful class. I may not know many individual students from this year yet, but seeing them in my room, responding to what I was saying, felt as though I was talking to students who've already had me for a month, because they know a fair amount about me. That's going to be a tough thing to give up when it does come time for me to move on to the next step in my life.
I don't want my first post in 4.5 months to be a real lunker, even though there's plenty to talk about. Rather, I'll try to make up for it in more frequent posts in the coming weeks. Suffice it to say, life is remarkably positive right now. It feels good to be back, in more ways than one.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
...as a word nerd
There's a phrase many of my students use a great deal: "Eso!" Literally, it means, "That!" as in, "Yeah, that's good! Keep doing that! Well Done!" Just wanted to point that out, to set up for later.
The last few weeks have seen a distinct uptick in wordplay in my life. I'm sure all my readers know that I'm a big wordplayer, but I've been messing about with words IN MY SPARE TIME. Good way to keep my mind engaged, to be sure. A few examples:
About 20 of the teachers held a pool for the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, aka March Madness. I volunteered to send out updates on the scores and standings for correct choices on brackets. Each night during the early rounds, when there were as many as 16 games a day, I sent out an update, giving each person's total points for correctly choosing winners of games. On a whim, the first night, I included nicknames for each person - sometimes pre-established, sometimes coined off the cuff. I quickly decided new nicknames with each update, while time-consuming, could add a bit of fun to the emails. They quickly devolved into wordplay: Josie, full name Josephine, became Josie "Feen" _______. Then food-related word play: Mr. Camp was "Smores," "Engel Hair Pasta," and so on. I ended up assigning everyone famous videos from youTube, classic rock songs, and so on. To wrap up, I actually turned the list into an online MadLib game. Definitely took a lot of pride in that email sequence.
I've always been a crossword nut, but a similar practice has become my "doodling:" the word square. A word square is a square of letters (4x4, 5x5, 3x3, so on) in which you can read words across each row, and if you read down the columns from left to right, the words are identical, like so:
TOP...FANG...DAMN
ODE..ALOE...ALOE (ALOE is a useful word for this, with 3 vowels)
PEN..NOUN..MOOR
.......GENT...NERD
So yeah, I do those in my spare time, and I introduced the idea to a friend of mine who used to teach at IST and came down last week to visit, who also happens to be a great lingophile. We worked on a few together, and nearly completed a 6x6 square!
Additionally, for this same friend, as a surprise, a fellow teacher and I organized a spelling bee for IST teachers to compete in one evening. As I wanted to participate, I wasn't able to be involved in the words or anything, but I was able to compose some more humorous emails in promotion of the event, centered around the idea of spelling. The sheer fact that we put on a spelling bee for FUN speaks volumes about our lexical looniness.
And now, just yesterday, I came across a triumph of poetry, which takes the word square into the next dimension. Here's a poem by Lewis Carroll, brought to my attention at the good folks at www.inkyfool.blogspot.com :
Read it across rows, then down the columns. That's right. The same.
Naturally, I took this as a challenge, and promptly composed my own (formatting issues prevent me from aligning in the same way Carroll did):
As ever your hair winks,
Ever I eye that turn.
Your eye pierces through me,
Hair that through ages dazzled,
Winks turn me dazzled, woozy.
But I wasn't satisfied. Carroll's is a 6x6, AND it rhymes. Well, my second attempt is still 5x5, but I think it's more eloquent, and it follows a metrical structure:
Under heaven I can sojourn,
Heaven barely can I see.
I can languish or remember,
can I? Or, unwilling, flee?
Sojourn, See, Remember, Flee... Surrender.
I'm seriously proud of this stuff.
I decided to use these in my classes - I try to do a bit of wordplay every week in my class, and I also know that sharing my own writing and showing that this stuff impacts my daily life is a great motivator for students. So today, in one period, I showed them word squares and these square poems, challenging them to come up with any of their own. One astute guy realized that if you take the lower-left-to-upper-right diagonal of a word square, you get a palindrome (a previous wordplay topic - I LOVE connections!) although it's not always a normal word - in the case of the square above that begins with DAMN, you do get NOON, so that's something.
We set out to make a square together as a class (mind you, making a word square can be a process of trial, error, and at times, abandoning attempts, so this was a risk). I cannot recall each of our four lines we were ultimately successful on, but I do recall the second and fourth lines, and have recreated an equivalent square that fits those lines:
MORE
OMAN (like the country)
RAKE
ENEE....ENEE is the Honduran equivalent of Consumers Energy, as far as I know. A bit of a stretch, yes, but it did provided some laughs.
As I was filling in the final E, the wonderment of some students became just too great, and MJ burst out in delight, "That is CRAZY!!"
Anything more than mild chuckles at a wordplay session is considered a success. This bypassed it all. I think I've inspired a couple word nerds to take on a new spare-time filler.
Then, as the students were filing out, Birdo said, "Bye, Mister...wait, I'll make a word square...BYE, YES, uhhh..." And I just had to burst out, "ESO!"
The last few weeks have seen a distinct uptick in wordplay in my life. I'm sure all my readers know that I'm a big wordplayer, but I've been messing about with words IN MY SPARE TIME. Good way to keep my mind engaged, to be sure. A few examples:
About 20 of the teachers held a pool for the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament, aka March Madness. I volunteered to send out updates on the scores and standings for correct choices on brackets. Each night during the early rounds, when there were as many as 16 games a day, I sent out an update, giving each person's total points for correctly choosing winners of games. On a whim, the first night, I included nicknames for each person - sometimes pre-established, sometimes coined off the cuff. I quickly decided new nicknames with each update, while time-consuming, could add a bit of fun to the emails. They quickly devolved into wordplay: Josie, full name Josephine, became Josie "Feen" _______. Then food-related word play: Mr. Camp was "Smores," "Engel Hair Pasta," and so on. I ended up assigning everyone famous videos from youTube, classic rock songs, and so on. To wrap up, I actually turned the list into an online MadLib game. Definitely took a lot of pride in that email sequence.
I've always been a crossword nut, but a similar practice has become my "doodling:" the word square. A word square is a square of letters (4x4, 5x5, 3x3, so on) in which you can read words across each row, and if you read down the columns from left to right, the words are identical, like so:
TOP...FANG...DAMN
ODE..ALOE...ALOE (ALOE is a useful word for this, with 3 vowels)
PEN..NOUN..MOOR
.......GENT...NERD
So yeah, I do those in my spare time, and I introduced the idea to a friend of mine who used to teach at IST and came down last week to visit, who also happens to be a great lingophile. We worked on a few together, and nearly completed a 6x6 square!
Additionally, for this same friend, as a surprise, a fellow teacher and I organized a spelling bee for IST teachers to compete in one evening. As I wanted to participate, I wasn't able to be involved in the words or anything, but I was able to compose some more humorous emails in promotion of the event, centered around the idea of spelling. The sheer fact that we put on a spelling bee for FUN speaks volumes about our lexical looniness.
And now, just yesterday, I came across a triumph of poetry, which takes the word square into the next dimension. Here's a poem by Lewis Carroll, brought to my attention at the good folks at www.inkyfool.blogspot.com :
Read it across rows, then down the columns. That's right. The same.Naturally, I took this as a challenge, and promptly composed my own (formatting issues prevent me from aligning in the same way Carroll did):
As ever your hair winks,
Ever I eye that turn.
Your eye pierces through me,
Hair that through ages dazzled,
Winks turn me dazzled, woozy.
But I wasn't satisfied. Carroll's is a 6x6, AND it rhymes. Well, my second attempt is still 5x5, but I think it's more eloquent, and it follows a metrical structure:
Under heaven I can sojourn,
Heaven barely can I see.
I can languish or remember,
can I? Or, unwilling, flee?
Sojourn, See, Remember, Flee... Surrender.
I'm seriously proud of this stuff.
I decided to use these in my classes - I try to do a bit of wordplay every week in my class, and I also know that sharing my own writing and showing that this stuff impacts my daily life is a great motivator for students. So today, in one period, I showed them word squares and these square poems, challenging them to come up with any of their own. One astute guy realized that if you take the lower-left-to-upper-right diagonal of a word square, you get a palindrome (a previous wordplay topic - I LOVE connections!) although it's not always a normal word - in the case of the square above that begins with DAMN, you do get NOON, so that's something.
We set out to make a square together as a class (mind you, making a word square can be a process of trial, error, and at times, abandoning attempts, so this was a risk). I cannot recall each of our four lines we were ultimately successful on, but I do recall the second and fourth lines, and have recreated an equivalent square that fits those lines:
MORE
OMAN (like the country)
RAKE
ENEE....ENEE is the Honduran equivalent of Consumers Energy, as far as I know. A bit of a stretch, yes, but it did provided some laughs.
As I was filling in the final E, the wonderment of some students became just too great, and MJ burst out in delight, "That is CRAZY!!"
Anything more than mild chuckles at a wordplay session is considered a success. This bypassed it all. I think I've inspired a couple word nerds to take on a new spare-time filler.
Then, as the students were filing out, Birdo said, "Bye, Mister...wait, I'll make a word square...BYE, YES, uhhh..." And I just had to burst out, "ESO!"
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
...getting old
I just spent a bit of time reading my old Xanga blog from my early college days. Specifically entries from mid-sophomore year (Oct. 2005-March 2006). It's remarkable how frequently I mention going to bed at 3am, starting a TV marathon at 1... It's currently nine o'clock and I have crawled into bed. Oh, how five years can change us.
Yet, oh, how we can stay the same. In addition to late night escapades, I read repeated references to my awful procrastination.
Yet, oh, how we can stay the same. In addition to late night escapades, I read repeated references to my awful procrastination.
Monday, March 21, 2011
...filling in the blanks
I gave my English exam for the third quarter today, and boy do I have a ton of grading ahead of me. There was a GREAT deal of writing on this test - writing that I have to read, of course - but I have to say that my students were champs. In my previous experience, many students sort of give up when it comes to writing essays, but most everybody stuck it out for the long haul and I had almost a third of the students working after the bell to give complete answers.
Anyway, I love grading objective portions of exams - I like developing a system and holding to that system. My OCD-ishness can come out. I especially love grading fill-in-the-blank activities for vocabulary - it's great when they get things right, but it can be hilarious when they mix things around. Examples:
"William rubbed a floozy on his sunburned shoulders." (The correct answer would be liniment.)
Ohhh boy. I'd share more, but two students will have to make up a very similar exam in the future. But I'm glad to get some chuckles out of grading.
Anyway, I love grading objective portions of exams - I like developing a system and holding to that system. My OCD-ishness can come out. I especially love grading fill-in-the-blank activities for vocabulary - it's great when they get things right, but it can be hilarious when they mix things around. Examples:
"William rubbed a floozy on his sunburned shoulders." (The correct answer would be liniment.)
Ohhh boy. I'd share more, but two students will have to make up a very similar exam in the future. But I'm glad to get some chuckles out of grading.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
...becoming a baleada salesman
I just googled the term "baleada salesman" (in quotes, so it searches just the exact wording)...and it returned ZERO results. So with this post, I should become the ONLY result for the google search "baleada salesman" next time Google trawls the web. Go me.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
...which still calls for occasional homesickness
Sunday I was overcome by my greatest bout of homesickness so far this year. I'm feeling the first major aftershock this evening.
True, the school year is veritably zipping along. I almost can say without exaggeration, "three months until home!" But that's a quarter of the year. What I've already passed away from the comfort of my own home three times, I have to pass yet again. And this last time, it's going to be HOT. This reality has been hitting me over the head like a wooden spoon the last few days.
Don't get me wrong - it's not so much the "enduring" what is down here - that's a verb I used a lot last year, but doesn't even really apply any more - it's the missing what's back home (that part has remained true throughout my Honduran tenure). The Decemberists, my favorite band of the past 6 years, is playing in Michigan TWICE over the next month and a half, including at Calvin, the very first place I saw them back in 2004. Plainwell Ice Cream had their opening weekend, and I talked to my brother as he was eating his first cone of the season on Sunday. I'm listening to the stream from the Grand Rapids local station, 88.1 WYCE, as I type this post.
The biggest problem is homesickness for things that don't even exist. This afternoon, as I tried to take a nap, I was suddenly plagued with the mental image/feeling of being freshly showered, one bare foot dug into the carpet as I sit in the corner of the couch at my folks' place, watching the Tigers on TV before the second-half slump, window and sliding door open to provide a nice cross-breeze, and could not get it out of my head. My stomach began hurting with the desire to feel that in real life immediately. (Sure, that situation would also imply no planning, no grading, no guilt for not doing those things, as well. That's definitely part of the desire.)
It all started when I realized the Holland Christian one-act competition piece, which I saw for 9 years straight, was done for the season. That got me on the HC website, scanning the staff page, seeing all the familiar names of my old teachers. The only way to get it out of my system was to write a few emails and call home.
To deal with today's aftershock, I booted up blogspot, began writing this, and concurrently read over my older posts from when I hated Honduras. The fact that I'm not that same person who wrote those posts speaks in droves toward...something optimistic.
Honduras still isn't paradise. It will never be home. I'll always be a total homebody, not to mention a nostalgia freak - whether I live in Michigan, Colorado, Honduras, or China (I won't live in China, but still), I'll look back on the past (or future) more favorably than the present. I think I'll always find or build some fence to separate me from the perceived greener grass. It's not an appealing character trait, and certainly something not to condemn myself to, but I think that's just me. That will result in bouts of homesickness. Deal with it.
And I will deal with it. But first I have to deal with a pile of grading and an exam to write.
True, the school year is veritably zipping along. I almost can say without exaggeration, "three months until home!" But that's a quarter of the year. What I've already passed away from the comfort of my own home three times, I have to pass yet again. And this last time, it's going to be HOT. This reality has been hitting me over the head like a wooden spoon the last few days.
Don't get me wrong - it's not so much the "enduring" what is down here - that's a verb I used a lot last year, but doesn't even really apply any more - it's the missing what's back home (that part has remained true throughout my Honduran tenure). The Decemberists, my favorite band of the past 6 years, is playing in Michigan TWICE over the next month and a half, including at Calvin, the very first place I saw them back in 2004. Plainwell Ice Cream had their opening weekend, and I talked to my brother as he was eating his first cone of the season on Sunday. I'm listening to the stream from the Grand Rapids local station, 88.1 WYCE, as I type this post.
The biggest problem is homesickness for things that don't even exist. This afternoon, as I tried to take a nap, I was suddenly plagued with the mental image/feeling of being freshly showered, one bare foot dug into the carpet as I sit in the corner of the couch at my folks' place, watching the Tigers on TV before the second-half slump, window and sliding door open to provide a nice cross-breeze, and could not get it out of my head. My stomach began hurting with the desire to feel that in real life immediately. (Sure, that situation would also imply no planning, no grading, no guilt for not doing those things, as well. That's definitely part of the desire.)
It all started when I realized the Holland Christian one-act competition piece, which I saw for 9 years straight, was done for the season. That got me on the HC website, scanning the staff page, seeing all the familiar names of my old teachers. The only way to get it out of my system was to write a few emails and call home.
To deal with today's aftershock, I booted up blogspot, began writing this, and concurrently read over my older posts from when I hated Honduras. The fact that I'm not that same person who wrote those posts speaks in droves toward...something optimistic.
Honduras still isn't paradise. It will never be home. I'll always be a total homebody, not to mention a nostalgia freak - whether I live in Michigan, Colorado, Honduras, or China (I won't live in China, but still), I'll look back on the past (or future) more favorably than the present. I think I'll always find or build some fence to separate me from the perceived greener grass. It's not an appealing character trait, and certainly something not to condemn myself to, but I think that's just me. That will result in bouts of homesickness. Deal with it.
And I will deal with it. But first I have to deal with a pile of grading and an exam to write.
Monday, March 7, 2011
...where roses are red and violets are blue
No, this post is not what you may think. Tonight was a classic night of me and my roommates getting on a topic and making lots of jokes about it. Tonight's topic: romance. The classic "Roses are red/ Violets are blue/ Sugar is sweet/ And so are you" poem came up, and my roommate Matt decided to parody it:
Pennies are brownish,
Angels rejoice;
Dinner with me this weekend
Is the right choice.
This obviously got me thinking about other possible ridiculous "love" poems of the same meter. I've decided to compose a few, starting with something to woo some lady as bookish as I:
Dickinson's dead,
Hawthorne is too;
Don't be a stranger
(like crazy Camus).
Ireland's Irish,
Wales is Welsh;
I am dyslexic
and admire your flesh.
T-shirts are teeny,
Keyboards have keys;
We should get coffee -
No, really! But--please?
Amoebas have one cell,
Prisons have dozens
My love for you
is more than my cousin's.
Post-Armageddon,
If we both remain,
We should hang out
It could be, like, you know, fun, and stuff.
Pennies are brownish,
Angels rejoice;
Dinner with me this weekend
Is the right choice.
This obviously got me thinking about other possible ridiculous "love" poems of the same meter. I've decided to compose a few, starting with something to woo some lady as bookish as I:
Dickinson's dead,
Hawthorne is too;
Don't be a stranger
(like crazy Camus).
Ireland's Irish,
Wales is Welsh;
I am dyslexic
and admire your flesh.
T-shirts are teeny,
Keyboards have keys;
We should get coffee -
No, really! But--please?
Amoebas have one cell,
Prisons have dozens
My love for you
is more than my cousin's.
Post-Armageddon,
If we both remain,
We should hang out
It could be, like, you know, fun, and stuff.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
...looking at my top 30 songs
One of my fellow teachers, Mr. Tao, came over to my house after a soccer game a few weeks ago. As we talked about numerous things, we ended up on the topic of music, and he mentioned he has a propensity to gather lists of people's Top 30 songs, and then distribute his own list. I thought this was a really cool tradition, and as we kept talking, it started weighing on my mind enough that I had to ask him to leave so I could get started compiling my list. I haven't been working on it constantly, but it's been in the back of my head for a while.
Within 4 days, I'd scanned through all of my ~8800 songs in my iTunes, grabbing any songs that rather stood out from the pack and putting them in a playlist. I ended up with about 120 songs. I let it sit for a week. I went through those 120, looking instead for songs that are just special, and put those into another playlist. I got 38.
I've occasionally been glancing at the list, culling the fold., sometimes deciding that a song isn't quite up to the level of the others, sometimes removing one because of an artist redundancy, deciding that while both are good, I should ensure that I range a variety of artists, rather than having 5 songs each from my top 4 bands and a few thrown in.
Thursday I reached 31. Tao threw me his loophole: 31 is okay.
So now I share my list of 31 songs, presented in alphabetical order according to Artist (In the case of classical/choral music, I've listed the composer, with the particular performer/album I have in iTunes coming after):
Within 4 days, I'd scanned through all of my ~8800 songs in my iTunes, grabbing any songs that rather stood out from the pack and putting them in a playlist. I ended up with about 120 songs. I let it sit for a week. I went through those 120, looking instead for songs that are just special, and put those into another playlist. I got 38.
I've occasionally been glancing at the list, culling the fold., sometimes deciding that a song isn't quite up to the level of the others, sometimes removing one because of an artist redundancy, deciding that while both are good, I should ensure that I range a variety of artists, rather than having 5 songs each from my top 4 bands and a few thrown in.
Thursday I reached 31. Tao threw me his loophole: 31 is okay.
So now I share my list of 31 songs, presented in alphabetical order according to Artist (In the case of classical/choral music, I've listed the composer, with the particular performer/album I have in iTunes coming after):
- Artist - Song Title (Album Title)
- Anathallo - Dokkoise House: With Face Covered (Floating World)
- Aqualung - Cinderella (Memory Man)
- Arcade Fire - Wake Up (Funeral)
- Barenaked Ladies - Break Your Heart (Born on a Pirate Ship)
- Barenaked Ladies - When I Fall (Born on a Pirate Ship)
- The Books - Take Time (The Lemon of Pink)
- Johnny Cash - Hurt (American IV: The Man Comes Around)
- Vic Chesnutt - I'm Through (Silver Lake)
- The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3 (The Crane Wife)
- Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal (Fleet Foxes)
- IKAIK - Just Because Things Are the Way They Are Right Now Doesn't Mean They'll Be That Way Forever - (Caldwell Sessions + 2)
- Billy Joel - Scenes From an Italian Restaurant (The Stranger)
- Kid Cudi - Pursuit of Happiness (Man on the Moon: The End of the Day)
- The Knife - Silent Shout (Silent Shout)
- John August Pamintuan - Ama Namen (performed by the Ateneo Chamber Singers on Pagsamba)
- Liars - The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack (Drum's Not Dead)
- The Magnetic Fields - I Don't Want to Get Over You (69 Love Songs)
- The National - Fake Empire (Boxer)
- The Postal Service - Nothing Better (Give Up)
- Sergei Rachmaninoff - Blagoslovi, Dushe Moya (performed by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers on Rachmaninoff: Vespers)
- Regina Spektor - Fidelity (Begin to Hope)
- Regina Spektor - On the Radio (Begin to Hope)
- Sigur Rós - Inní mér syngur vitleysingur (Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust)
- Sigur Rós - Sæglópur (Takk...)
- Sleigh Bells - Tell 'Em (Treats)
- Sufjan Stevens - Holland (Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State)
- They Might Be Giants - Older (Mink Car)
- Vampire Weekend - M79 (Vampire Weekend)
- "Weird Al" Yankovic - White and Nerdy (Straight Outta Lynwood)
- Kanye West - Gone (Late Registration)
- Eric Whitacre - i thank you God for most this amazing day (performed by the Calvin College Capella on Jubilate)
- Song that I've known the longest: "Hurt." It's possible/probable I knew "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant" earlier, but that would really only be because of my brother Jeff. I grew to truly appreciate it later. It should be noted that these are the only two songs I was familiar with before college.
- Most recent song: Quite sure it's "Tell 'Em." "Pursuit of Happiness" came earlier in 2010 in the form of the music video. Both are the only songs on my list that are more recent than late 2008.
- Choral songs: 3 - two of which I sang while in Capella at Calvin, the other (Rachmaninoff) heard at a joint concert with Capella, sung by the other choir. Beautiful.
- Songs that come from a COMPLETE ALBUM I own: 28. Two of the others are from greatest hits compilations (of which I do have the complete discs), the other is "Ama Namen." So those hardly count. I'm an album guy.
- Songs I have paid money for: 22. Library, friends, and the myTunes downloading program took care of the others. It's worth noting several of the 22 I possessed in some way before later paying money for it.
- Songs that are the opening track of their respective album: 8. I find this curious. I blame the fact that the opening strains of an album are the ones that stick with me most, and become the poster child for an album I particularly love. (Dokkoise House shares this phenomenon, as it was the first song I ever heard Anathallo perform. Similar with Sigur Ros and Fleet Foxes, just not performed.)
- The IKAIK song is the only on the list done by an artist you'd have trouble researching online, i.e., by someone who's not "famous."
- Longest Song: "Sæglópur," 7:39. Shortest: "Older," 1:52
- Regina Spektor, Barenaked Ladies, and Sigur Ros are the only repeat artists on the list, but the first two have the distinction of getting two songs from the same album on the list. It's funny, because while BNL and Sigur Ros are certainly one of my favorite bands, I'm not CRAZY about Regina (although I like her) apart from those two songs. Meanwhile, I was struggling to get a TMBG song on my list despite how much I like them as a band.
- Songs with significant amounts of lyrics in a foreign language: 5 (Ama Namen, Dokkoise House, Rachmaninoff, and both Sigur Ros songs.)
- Songs I have seen/performed live: 12 (I don't think I've seen "Holland" live, but that would make 13)
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
ESL Moment of the....Last 3 months, I guess
Umm, sorry to everyone about my delinquency in posting. Life's been...pretty good I suppose. I find myself depriving myself of sleep fairly regularly, and then once in a while, like today, I end up taking a nap over 3 hours long to accommodate my funny sleep patterns. But that's whatever. Life is good. I'm pretty big on the teaching aspect to my life, pretty big on the social/community aspect, and that makes everything better than last year.
The impetus to drive me out of my blog reverie is the somewhat ridiculousness of the annual spelling bee. Don't get me wrong; I love spelling bees. I pride myself on my spelling, and any opportunity to show that off is fantastic. Last week I held spelling bees in each of my classes, and the top students in each class will face off soon to determine representatives for IST in each grade in the local bilingual school association bee. I was given a list of words to read from with sentences that accompany each word - no definition provided, which I feel should always be available for the spellers so they can more effectively determine word roots and the like, but that's beside the point. These lists were apparently compiled a number of years ago through a collaboration of the various schools involved - each school, for each grade level, provided a number of words and sentences. The hilarity is found in some of these sentences, which (no offense intended to any of my students who I know are reading this) read like they were written by some of my students - getting the implied definition of the word wrong, phrasing things like they would be in Spanish, and especially using words as the wrong part of speech, which is the most typical and blatant error in the following sentences that I've compiled below, straight from my word list:
commune - He is really commune in the way he talks.
dapper - Jennifer went so dapper to the party. (yesterday) [editor's note: All sentences shown as they appear on my paper.]
crabbed - He has a crabbed handwriting.
culprit - The judge culprit him for assassination.
docket - We docket the document.
credence - Their credence in the god Helios did not dissuade them from eating the cattle.
chronic - The diabetes is a chronic disease. [editor's note: It is common in Spanish to use many definite articles.]
daunt - With his words he's only trying to make you daunt.
calamity - Loosing our homes was a great calamity to us all.
complacent - He had become a complacent after years of success.
acquisition - I just got a new acquisition, I bought a new CD. [Comma splice.]
mystifying - She has a mystifying behavior. [This one just seems lazy.]
amply - That is an amply quantity, is more than enough. [THREE things wrong here!]
garrulous - He is to garrulous and she is extremely quiet.
profiteer - The food seller profiteer his clients. [I think of profiteer mostly as a noun - a person - and while it certainly can be a verb, it should be conjugated correctly!]
flambeau - The president during the football tournament flambeau the torch. [Noun being "verbed," fake verb in the wrong form, and we have a misplaced modifier/comma issue - apparently he was just the president for the time frame of the tournament!]
cohesion - The seniors did cohesion on the party.
discounting - We were discounting the candies we ate. [D'you mean counting backwards?]
cynical - Alejandro is so cynical, he only thinks of himself.
veritable - He is a veritable person. [Okay, veritable kinda means "genuine," but sometimes synonyms aren't synonyms for every sense of the other word.]
conciliate - Judd offered conciliate the argument.
gossamer - The store sold gossamer for his clients. [A store itself (himself?) doesn't do any selling, and where can you buy spider web material?]
feign - he is being feign in his reaction, he really is disappointed.
facilitate - The math teacher facilitate us the things by giving us a study guide. [Good try in using an indirect object, but it doesn't work here, really. And what "things?" Can you specify?]
susceptible - The sound of water against the ship was barely susceptible. [I wouldn't think of attacking the sound of water!]
anachronism - It would be an anachronism if you include electricity in a play about the [...thousands of years before electricity was invented?]
consternation - I feel a great consternation about the note in the science class.
picturesque - We took a picturesque picture yesterday. [No real grammatical/usage errors, but really?]
Now, it's worth noting that this doesn't amount to a great proportion of the sentences provided - there were nearly 4 single-spaced pages of words - but I couldn't help but crack up when I read some of these, and I carried my list around for a couple of days, reading sentences to any other teacher who would listen, making them crack up too.
Hopefully I won't wait three more months for my next post. That would take me much too close to the end of the year.
The impetus to drive me out of my blog reverie is the somewhat ridiculousness of the annual spelling bee. Don't get me wrong; I love spelling bees. I pride myself on my spelling, and any opportunity to show that off is fantastic. Last week I held spelling bees in each of my classes, and the top students in each class will face off soon to determine representatives for IST in each grade in the local bilingual school association bee. I was given a list of words to read from with sentences that accompany each word - no definition provided, which I feel should always be available for the spellers so they can more effectively determine word roots and the like, but that's beside the point. These lists were apparently compiled a number of years ago through a collaboration of the various schools involved - each school, for each grade level, provided a number of words and sentences. The hilarity is found in some of these sentences, which (no offense intended to any of my students who I know are reading this) read like they were written by some of my students - getting the implied definition of the word wrong, phrasing things like they would be in Spanish, and especially using words as the wrong part of speech, which is the most typical and blatant error in the following sentences that I've compiled below, straight from my word list:
commune - He is really commune in the way he talks.
dapper - Jennifer went so dapper to the party. (yesterday) [editor's note: All sentences shown as they appear on my paper.]
crabbed - He has a crabbed handwriting.
culprit - The judge culprit him for assassination.
docket - We docket the document.
credence - Their credence in the god Helios did not dissuade them from eating the cattle.
chronic - The diabetes is a chronic disease. [editor's note: It is common in Spanish to use many definite articles.]
daunt - With his words he's only trying to make you daunt.
calamity - Loosing our homes was a great calamity to us all.
complacent - He had become a complacent after years of success.
acquisition - I just got a new acquisition, I bought a new CD. [Comma splice.]
mystifying - She has a mystifying behavior. [This one just seems lazy.]
amply - That is an amply quantity, is more than enough. [THREE things wrong here!]
garrulous - He is to garrulous and she is extremely quiet.
profiteer - The food seller profiteer his clients. [I think of profiteer mostly as a noun - a person - and while it certainly can be a verb, it should be conjugated correctly!]
flambeau - The president during the football tournament flambeau the torch. [Noun being "verbed," fake verb in the wrong form, and we have a misplaced modifier/comma issue - apparently he was just the president for the time frame of the tournament!]
cohesion - The seniors did cohesion on the party.
discounting - We were discounting the candies we ate. [D'you mean counting backwards?]
cynical - Alejandro is so cynical, he only thinks of himself.
veritable - He is a veritable person. [Okay, veritable kinda means "genuine," but sometimes synonyms aren't synonyms for every sense of the other word.]
conciliate - Judd offered conciliate the argument.
gossamer - The store sold gossamer for his clients. [A store itself (himself?) doesn't do any selling, and where can you buy spider web material?]
feign - he is being feign in his reaction, he really is disappointed.
facilitate - The math teacher facilitate us the things by giving us a study guide. [Good try in using an indirect object, but it doesn't work here, really. And what "things?" Can you specify?]
susceptible - The sound of water against the ship was barely susceptible. [I wouldn't think of attacking the sound of water!]
anachronism - It would be an anachronism if you include electricity in a play about the [...thousands of years before electricity was invented?]
consternation - I feel a great consternation about the note in the science class.
picturesque - We took a picturesque picture yesterday. [No real grammatical/usage errors, but really?]
Now, it's worth noting that this doesn't amount to a great proportion of the sentences provided - there were nearly 4 single-spaced pages of words - but I couldn't help but crack up when I read some of these, and I carried my list around for a couple of days, reading sentences to any other teacher who would listen, making them crack up too.
Hopefully I won't wait three more months for my next post. That would take me much too close to the end of the year.
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