Teacher, What Does Jeeping Mean?

There are two candidates for the Perfect Moment….or maybe two completely different Perfect Moments. Maybe I am too tired to pick the right one.

The first is the picture I have included above. I found it on one of my student’s notebooks.  When I asked him how old the book was, he wasn’t sure.  He did say he has had it since he started learning English, though.

In my years of teaching, I have seen lots of notebooks with nonsensical English on them. The vast majority of these things came from Asia.  This one had Russian on it, but my student had never been to Russia.

As for me, I didn’t know that Jeep could be a gerund.

The second is a moment of quiet. You see, the teacher’s room is a noisy place.  Teachers, perhaps having spent years or just the last couple of hours trying to get their students’ attentions, have developed loud projecting voices.  Couple that with a predisposition towards weird niche pursuits, unique personalities, and everyone knowing a smattering of languages and you have the perfect recipe for cacophony.

We have teacher’s meeting scheduled during lunch breaks this week. People are scheduled on different days and I am scheduled for the next day, so I remained at my desk while everyone in my immediate area filed out.  What was left was beautiful silence.  No arguing about comparatives or past participles.  No play by play descriptions of RuPaul’s Drag Race.  No music or movie trivia.  There was just silence.

Silence.

I haven’t had such a productive lunch break in months.

What Student Notebooks Teach Us

Yesterday’s Back to School Post must still be stuck in my head because it slightly affected the my world today. I teach ESL to adults in the Toronto area.  These are not immigrants, but rather people who want/need to improve their English.  They aren’t like high school and middle school students, who need to do any back to school shopping….or do they?

You see, some of these adults arrive without pens or notebooks. Others have brought the remains of their high school equipment.  Some of my older students have liberated some of their children’s things.  Yes, that means a 50-year-old student could conceivably (and has) show up with a Barbie eraser and Little Mermaid Pencil case.  Add this to the fact that my students come from all over the world and what passes for high school cool or grade school cool in their countries is not the same as here.  While some of the stuff they have gotten their hands on is better than I could find here, some of it is definitely weirder.

While I might find it humorous, I also find it rather refreshing.

Today, I caught sight of one of my students’ notebooks. The only thing I could think of was that this was the definition of cute.  When she caught my eye, she immediately explained that she loved cats and was, indeed, a cat person.

Looking at it again, I wonder if this notebook is trying to be cute, looking for juxtaposition, or trying to teach us about tolerance and the need to defeat racism with love.

Also, I remember watching a vlog (video blog) shot in South Korea that used similar images of black and white cats to warm against North Korean spies.  If anyone is in South Korea, and these posters still exist,  maybe they could post some of these images.  They are quite interesting.

When I took the picture, I just thought it was cute, but then again, I have a black cat of my own.

July 24, 2014: Finding a Bit of the Profound in the Most Unusual of Places

As an ESL teacher, I come across lots of creative English.  While my students produce their fair share of it, I am not writing to ridicule them.  They are trying, and when they make the effort, mistakes are just mile markers in their improvement.  I certainly wouldn’t laugh at them.  I’ve been on the other side of that dynamic, and I appreciated teachers who helped and encouraged, not ridiculed.

However, when this creative English is adorned on notebooks and pencil cases they have brought with them from their countries….well, that’s a different matter all together.  You’ve probably heard of Engrish.  That is, English created in Asia (hence the mixing of the l and r sound), mostly as marketing.  I am sure if you do a search, you will find some classic examples.  A lot of the “cutesy” fashion from Asia features interesting English.  I used to get frustrated, wondering why it couldn’t be fixed.  These days, I am looking for the ultimate Engrish…but that’s another story.

Today, absentmindedly, I reached for one of my student’s notebooks.  I expected to read some butchered platitude.  Instead, the following was written on her notebook.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

Dance, as though no one is watching.

Love, as though you have never been hurt before.

Sing, as though no one can hear you.

Work, as though you don’t need the money.

Live, as though heaven is on earth.

First of all, I was impressed that the English was so correct.  This is probably some famous quote (I should look for it, but I am tired and I need to go to bed).  If you are reading this and you are the author, sorry for posting it here.  Also, you might be able to sue some Korean publishing company.

The other thing is, I actually really liked this.  I smiled when I read it.  It isn’t that it is so deep, because it isn’t.  However, seeing it there, when I wasn’t expecting it, and wasn’t expecting it to be correctly written, was rather perfect.  It all makes sense despite the fact that it was meant to be more decorative than profound.  It is rather simple, but that is kind of beautiful.

If I had to pick one of those lines, the one that moves me the most is the third one.  I suspect that it is the hardest of these things to live up to.  Perhaps that is why I single it out.