Monday, October 09, 2006

Word to the wise (New Thing #147 and 148)

If you ever find yourself in the position where you're teaching an elementary school ESL class and you've only gotten 3 hours of sleep and you don't understand or speak a lick of Spanish, you should, at the very least, eat breakfast.

New Thing #147: I taught English as a Second Language to a group of kids who, for the most part, only spoke Spanish, which would have been fine and manageable had I gotten more than three hours sleep and eaten something (anything) before beginning my seven hour shift, but since I was so danged tired and hungry, there were several moments where I not only didn't understand or speak Spanish but I also didn't understand or speak English. Despite my complete and utter lack of mental faculties today, the kids were good kids and I think they liked me.

New Thing #148: (this one I haven't actually done yet, but I'm doing it tomorrow, so I'll go ahead and take credit for it): I'm substituting for a teacher with my own name, a teacher named Mr. Patterson. How funny is that? (Okay, maybe it isn't even remotely funny, but I'm still running on the same three hours of sleep from last night, so humor isn't my strong suit right now) (I don't know what my strong suit right now is) Still, I think it's funny and I'm really looking forward to being able to say "I'm Mr. Patterson" tomorrow and having kids look at me and be like "no, you're not, we know Mr. Patterson and you're not Mr. Patterson," and then being like, "oh, but I am," and then them being like, "um, you're weird and you're not our teacher," and then me being like, "but we have the same name! ha!" and then them looking at me blankly. It's gonna be so funny.

3 comments:

Gina said...

Fiiiirst! Oh, what an honor!

I wish I was a little kid and could have you as a sub teacher. I think you would be my favorite and I would bring you an apple for your desk.

You coming to game night on Saturday?

Erik said...

Gina, YES, i am coming to game night! But you already know that because I already emailed you. But I wanted to reply here in case anyone read your comment and they were wondering, I didn't want to leave it like a cliffhanger.

Erik said...

Urp, are you now just saying words that the word verification words look like? Instead of phrases? You're really weird. Tres canadienne.