GWB and a great white
I tried an activity with my classes that seemed doomed to bomb. It's called "Making connections," and involves giving small groups of students two different, seemingly unrelated photos from a magazine and challenging them to find every conceivable connection between the two.
The photo pairs we used were: GWB and a great white shark; John Kerry and a bunch of green grapes; Albert Einstein and a car tire; a dog jumping for a frisbee and a motocross racer; a blonde, gorgeous Benetton sweater model and a cup of coffee; a cougar in snow and a pair of Columbia-brand shorts.
To my shock and delight, the students devoured this activity with an intensity and passion that they haven't displayed for any of my previous lesson plans. Einstein's mind is always in motion, spinning, just like the car tire; Einstein's theory of relativity, and the invention of the tire, changed human history; the dog jumping for the frisbee and the motocrosser each has four legs (sort of true, if you think about it); the pupils of the model's eyes are the same color as coffee; John Kerry's face looks like a raisin (i.e. a dried grape); the Columbia shorts were all that's left of the cougar's latest victim.
Drawing by far the most spirited response, of course, was GWB and the shark. Here's one group's (all shy, respectful first-year girls) list:
1) cruel
2) both like swimming
3) both are dictators
4) both powerful
5) both fearful
6) both white
7) big nose
8) sly
9) both have a cruel partner
10) both a little fat
11) both hurt others
12) meat eaters
13) both ugly
14) nimble
15) both have children
16) active
17) brave
18) going fast
19) smart
20) both animals
In my night class on Tuesday, a boy in the front row, who's ordinarily quite active but not outspoken, and always respectful, rose excitedly and started laying in to me: "How can you elect such a killer? How can you look in the eyes of a crying mother who's lost her son? How can you see a girl who lost her father? How can you destroy civilizations with your bombs? If that vicious man ever attacks the mainland, I want to tell you, I will stand and fight to the death for my country!"
We were both standing, our faces inches apart, close enough that I absorbed a healthy shower of his venomous saliva. His classmates were laughing loudly during his rant, which I've come to know is more out of discomfort than glee. Still, the laughter added to my feeling of isolation.
Through it all, I stood silently and listened. He obviously was not to be reasoned with, and I have no great defense for many of my country's recent actions, and no defense whatsoever for our current leader.
At the end of it, when he was red in the face and seemed eager to go on but almost too exhausted to do so, there was a pregnant pause, which I broke by saying, "But what about the shark?" The class broke into earth-shattering laughter.
In a strange way, the episode stands as a real breakthrough in my teaching career. If only I could stir the passions of my students so deeply every class, life would be a whole lot more interesting. Chinese students, despite all their great qualities, are painfully shy and agonizingly polite. Both qualities inhibit their English studies, for the only way to learn a language well is to gab incessantly in it, making mistakes like it's your job to do so, mimicking a three-year-old.
And here this kid was, breaking all the rules, giving a blunt piece of his angry mind straight to the foreign teacher, who's supposed to be Mr. Untouchable, saying whatever came to his mind in whatever form it burst forth from his lips, all in clear, crisp English, without pause, without apology, about the topic no one in China is supposed to touch: politics. Such rants should be the norm in college, not the exception, and ranting in your second language has got to garner extra credit, at least in my class.
After class, he sent me this text message on my cell-out phone: "i am your student in speak class. in class i do not talk to you, just about bush. if my talking make you a little sadness, i want to say sorry. i and many classmate like you. because you bring the happyness to us. my china name is [ ]. my english name is dan. could i make a friend with you? have a good dream."
I wrote back, said I wasn't offended and understood his frustration, commended him on his use of English, and complimented him on his English name.
