Perks of Being A Teacher

Despite all appearances, there are in fact occasional perks to being a teacher. I was such an amateur I was missing out on one of these most essential of perks. I hadn't realized what I was missing until one teacher asked me to look over a couple of things her students had written. To make corrections I, of course, used mechanical pencil, my preferred writing tool. Preferred writing implement, even. Feel free to debate the merits of normal pencil or ink vs. mechanical pencil; an exercise in futility is still exercise.

When she saw what I had done, she said, "You know, you could have used red pen."

Red pen. The platinum card of writing utensils. The Excalibur of the literary set. The, you know, the best of some stuff to some other thing. I don't need to come up with my own analogies anymore: I get to use red pen to cross out other people's analogies.

I told her the only problem with such an upgrade: I didn't have a red pen. She promptly fished one out of her bag and gave it to me to keep. Wow, this takes editing to the extreme. Extreme editing! Taking the essaying world by storm! Extremely critical! Extreme editing! You don't argue with the red pen. It's so official. Truly, the red pen is mightier than the sword. Sure, swords can destroy people physically. Pffff. Big whoop. Red pens can destroy people emotionally and intellectually. If that's not why people become teachers, I must have missed the enormous Christmas bonus. (What if I did? Boy, would my face have matched my pen.)

But seriously, I've always enjoyed editing, and now I get to edit with a red pen. I have reached an entirely new level of job satisfaction. The last time school supplies had such a giddying effect on me, I woke up with a bottle of rubber cement stuck to my tongue and a Sharpie shoved up each of my nostrils. Wasn't 4th grade a trip?

Disclaimer: Don't eat rubber cement. You'll spoil your appetite for Elmer's Glue. And don't they still make specially scented markers for kids to scratch that nasal itch?

A Week Later

I didn't find the time to post at all this week, unfortunately. Last weekend in Neunkirchen/Saarbruecken was a lot of fun -- Ben and I saw a soccer game, then we spent the night hanging out with the girls in Saarbruecken, and on Sunday we went to Germany's only Hooters restaurant in Neunkirchen. Odd for my first time at a Hooters to be in Germany. We had giant hamburgers for dinner, and the others left but Ben and I stayed to watch the Patriots-Steelers game. At a little after midnight, Hooters finally kicked us out...at which time it was only the third quarter of the game. While it was clear that the Patriots were dominating (sorry, Ben, it's just their time.), it was still excruciating not to find out the outcome until the next afternoon -- Ben, you really need to get the internet.

And since I had taken Monday off to give myself time to recover and return home from watching football in Neunkirchen, the week was pretty short. At choir on Tuesday the director singled me out to sing with her while the rest of the group did the chorus and "la la las" and such. This would have been uncomfortable for me under the best of circumstances, and it was definitely not the best of circumstances. I had never even seen the song before, the melody was tricky, and it was written in ol' black southern slang (the title is "Mary's Boychile," which should explain it). We did a few painful verses, during which the director kept asking the others to sing a little quieter; it doesn't matter how quietly they sing if all I'm doing is lip syncing, though. It was a combination of that and some mumbling and stumbling. Thankfully I won't be at the Christmas concert so she can't possibly ask me to perform a solo there.

Wednesday at school I had a meeting to gauge the interest of 11-13 grade students in having a conversation hour once a week. Some of the teachers were skeptical, but there was a large turnout -- apparently German high schoolers are curious about this "America" thing. I'm going to start the program some time after Christmas break so hopefully I can feed them my propaganda and end up with some devoted minions. Wednesday night I went out to some bars/clubs with a couple of German friends -- played some darts, foosball, and pool, and then went to a dance club for a bit. Both places were new to me, so it was useful in addition to fun.

Thursday I went to Thorlef and Brigitte's for the night, as Puppe and Richard had arrived on Wednesday. We had a fantastic dinner (three course meal involving goose is hard to beat) and spent the night catching up and sampling Thorlef's extensive liquor supply. "Sampling" implies that we had small portions of many liquors, which is true except for the "small" part. Then yesterday Puppe, Richard, Brigitte, and I went into Darmstadt to do a little shopping, see the Christmas market, and, naturally, eat some more delicious food. The place also brewed their own beer. Also delicious.

I took the train back home, showered, packed an overnight bag, and headed to the University. Eight of us from the Uni Mainz Ultimate Frisbee team drove to Dortmund for a tournament. This was my first, so I was pretty excited. It was mostly a beginner's tourney, but anyone was invited so there was a wide range of skill levels. We got there a little before 10 PM. We played our first game at 11 PM. We finished our last game at 7 AM this morning. The night was filled with food, beer, and ultimate frisbee, but definitely no sleep. It was a great experience to be playing for real instead of just practicing, although I clearly need a lot more work. Some people stayed in the gym to sleep for a while this morning, but one of our cars was headed back so I went along.

I was in the passenger seat, so I tried my best to keep up a conversation with the driver for the 2 and a half hour drive so he wouldn't get too tired either. When I was talking, I could function normally. When I stopped talking, my brain went into absolute shut-down mode, and I've never had a harder time keeping my eyes open (okay, maybe a few times in high school history classes). I was having the weirdest one minute bouts of unconsciousness and dream sessions. So when I got back home, I crashed...for a whole four hours. No time for more, though -- there's a birthday party to attend tonight. Duty calls.

5th Graders

Those 5th graders have definitely become my favorites. It helps that I'm clearly their favorite, too. I finally led one of their classes Thursday while Florian took the extra time to finish grading their tests in the back of the room. Two things made it all worthwhile. The first was a reading exercise. The story involved some kid's computer essentially coming to life and talking to him and his grandmother, which neither of them seemed too surprised about. I presume Grandma's medicine cabinet had something to do with this -- whatever they were on, it was strong enough to cause shared hallucinations and yet simultaneously keep them mellow enough to chat amicably with a newly self-aware machine. I woulda freaked.

But the trippy plot isn't my point -- my point is that as the kids took turn reading, they automatically put on a robotic voice when speaking the part of the computer. It was hilarious. The only thing that could have topped that is if they had spontaneously busted out The Robot. I'm talkin' television musical here, like the entire class standing up, flattening their hands, and flailing around spasmodically the way the Tin Man might if he was in dire need of oil during a dance-off. It couldn't get any better than that.

Wow, I just figured out what my next lesson is going to be.

And the second thing that made it worthwhile was when we did an exercise on the months and seasons. I got to point to each one and have the entire class repeat after me. That is way too much fun. If that's what it takes to be a 5th grade teacher, maybe I need to rethink my entire life plan (shouldn't take long...done). I could never be an evil dictator, because if I were in charge there would be no oppression, there would be no warring, there would be no forced labor. There would be only repeating after me. Where's the harm in that?

And lastly, another incident that happened last week, also involving some of the 5th graders. Some of the girls had surrounded me on my way to a class on Wednesday, but I eventually deflected them. They must not have been very observant, because when I got to their class on Thursday, some of the same girls appeared before me with strange expressions and questions. I could tell they were talking about my goatee, and I finally calmed them down enough to figure out what they were asking: "Did you have that yesterday??"

...

"Yes, I had it yesterday. You must have missed it."

Followed by an even better question: "Is it real?"

...

Is it possible these girls recently uncovered The Great Santa Claus Hoax and are now trying to protect themselves from falling once again into the trap of fake facial hair? This is 5th grade, anything is possible.

Good Timing

It's been a few busy days since I posted, but only a couple of things worth mentioning. The choir performance at church on Sunday went well, I guess. We sang at various times throughout the mass, and otherwise things ran normally. We didn't receive a standing ovation and it's not the kind of place where people clap and cheer or even look as if they're enjoying themselves, no matter what you do, so it's tough to judge how much they enjoyed it. It's bad enough trying to introduce a bit of rousing gospel music to a normal church service in America -- now imagine introducing a bit of rousing gospel music in a different language, and you can start to picture those stoic faces. The highlight: during the finale of one song we got the rhythmic clap going, and the only person in the audience to join in was some old guy. Thankfully I was in the back and everyone was singing at that point, so I doubt many people noticed when I almost laughed and had to stop singing for a minute.

Last night I skipped out on choir practice to go to the Christmas market for a bit with a few people, where I continued to introduce Germans to the delightful addition of whiskey to the Gluehwein. Now that I have my Irish-red goatee again, though, I should probably ditch the cheap Scotch whiskey in favor of some cheap equivalent of Jameson. Gotta support the family connections (cheaply, of course).

And after posting about hedgehogs the other day, I feel obliged to mention this article I found: "Abandoned baby hedgehogs are too weak to hibernate", Too weak to go into a deep sleep? Maybe they're just overtired. Perhaps a months-long nap would help. In any case, I guarantee you'll want to click the link and see the article for yourself. How can I possibly guarantee such a thing, you ask? Pictures. What's what you say? You're sure baby hedgehogs are cute and all, but you don't think that warrants a full guarantee? Well baby hedgehogs should be enough, you cold-hearted monster.

But wait, there's more! Did I forget to mention that the baby hedgehogs in these pictures are wearing teeny...tiny...baby...hedgehog........casts? Never have I wanted to sign somebody's cast more than right now. I really can't stress this enough, people: you WANT to see baby hedgehogs wearing neon green or blue casts on their legs. It will expunge all feelings of stress and animosity from your soul. There. This article creates world peace if everybody looks at it. Is that good enough? Or does it need to be covered in chocolate and emissions-free first? Go.