So far, I suck at being a teacher. I've got the assistant part down fine, but when it comes time to step up to the plate everyone can see that I'm still the bat boy. Even my lesson last week on Halloween, the coolest holiday since Whacking Day, felt kind of off. I also had trouble keeping a conversation about Irish immigrants going. I tried to engage in a historically accurate role playing activity, but the kids really couldn't hold their alcohol.
And today the 7th graders started to learn about about sports in their English class. Since all they learn is British English, all they're gonna know is cricket and tea-drinking. Well, not if I have anything to say about it. So I took it upon myself to introduce them to America's pastime, and I don't mean deep-frying.
Proudly sporting my Red Sox -- Youkilis t-shirt and equipped with a homemade fill-in-the-blanks worksheet, I entered the fray. I boldly attempted to explain the rules of this complex sport, lobbing terms at them and sketching shapes on the board. All this while trying not to rely on the one kid in the class who lived in America for like the past 5 years -- of course he's gonna raise his hand, so it's up to me to shamelessly ignore his flailing appendage.
After covering the intricacies of the pitcher-catcher-batter love triangle (the pitcher pitches to the catcher, who catches, while the batter tries to bat using his bat), I finally unleashed them upon the worksheet. And following my teacher's shrewd advice, I made the American-versed whizkid come up with the German translations of the key words while he waited for the others to finish. That's no intentional walk; that's hit by piatch, biatch.
After that it was just a matter of cleaning up -- I had the kids read through the sentences with the answers in place, and then they got to hear and write down the German translations from that kid. The bell rang, and ya know, I feel like I finally hit one out of the park. Of the lessons I've prepared on my own, this is the first one that seemed to go smoothly. In your face, Yankees. Tune in next time, when I dare to demonstrate: if things go well with props and pics, maybe I can farm this class and produce the next Jacoby Ellsbury. Plus I'm gonna introduce them to American football, courtesy of an arm-bar to the face followed by a pelvis-intensive victory dance.
I'm goin' to Disney World!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
3 comments:
As a follow-up lesson, you should try to teach them the baseball terminology that we use in everyday English. You're a funny writer too; I enjoyed reading about your teaching stories and other misadventures.
Yeah, that would be cool to teach them "everyday" baseball terminology, but of course the constant obstacle is their Britishness. It's hard enough to get them to say "eraser" instead of "rubber," let alone try to introduce words and phrases from a sport that no one on this side of the pond plays. Definitely tricky to teach American English when all of their materials and lessons have to do with British English otherwise.
That post made me giggle. Teehee! GO RED SOX!
Post a Comment