Humiliation: Stories

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I teach at a private English school in Hermosillo, Mexico. It was Saturday, the five hour intensive class day, and I was trying to pull sentences out of my students to further explain the lesson on future simple. It was the weekend during Mexican Independence and I was asking the students what they had planned for the long weekend. One student told me a place they were going that I couldn't decipher the name. This is normal for me since I've only been here 3 months. I asked him again. I wrote "I will go to mericon" on the board. In an instant the whole class choired "NO!" and I swiftly reacted by slamming my hand on the board and wiping the last word I'd written. I knew this word but was so focused on learning the name of the place I had written the closest word I knew. However, "mericon" is a very derogatory insult for a homosexual person. The student then walked up to the board and wrote "Malecon". Ahhhhh. Stephen Hornby, national playwright-in-residence for the UK's LGBT History Month, argues that our stories have long been actively suppressed. "The only interest used to be in censoring or denying any queer elements of the records of the past. So, things were kept from public display, passages were omitted from books and sexual relationships were presented as passionate friendships. That was wilful and deliberate distortion." What we see all through history is that people are denied their past as part of a way to control them," says Hornby. "The fascist playbook is always to destroy the history and culture of the minority it is repressing. History empowers us. At its most fundamental, it says, 'We have always been here. We have a place.'" Later in the evening, after hours, I explained the odd reactions of the class to my Turkish friends and, to my dismay, I was given exactly the same response! And thus I found myself facing a large class of seventy odd students 'all these will study English? "I looked around with baleful eyes, regions of sorrow, deep scars English stress had entrenched the pale cheeks, dismal situation, worse and wild..to study a foreign compulsory language is torture , endless..Ah my drifting thoughts ..stop. .or pandemonium will prevail.

Debbie" or a similar sounding word in the Nanjing (200 km away) dialect means 'vulva' as I discovered from a more open-minded Chinese lady teacher. Oops ! Won't make that mistake again...... Halloween was advancing upon us where it is also highly celebrated in Panama, 9 degrees north of the equator. I had baked Halloween cupcakes for both of my classes, but had brought only cupcakes for one classroom the day before Halloween and it was for the second class not the first. I was in the first classroom and left for two minutes. Upon returning, I noticed that the aluminum foil covering the cupcakes had moved. Meanwhile, the students were on their way out. As I moved towards the cupcakes and lifted the aluminum foil, I noticed half of them gone. I was so dissapointed! I could not believe my students had eaten the other group's cupcakes knowing they were going to receive their cupcakes tomorrow. Well, they must have been good as the cupcake holders were in the garbage. The lesson I learned was to never let the students know you have sweets for them.

I like to take new teachers into these classes so they cabn see the funny side of the job, and the Viets then go into a conversation role play that goes something like this: Language: English Words: 141,910 Chapters: 11/11 Comments: 209 Kudos: 836 Bookmarks: 134 Hits: 34,224 The Principal gave a loud introduction and left the class; I felt that she almost scurried out of the classroom; reminded me of the white rabbit of ' Alice in Wonderland' I was teaching in a language mill in downtown Suzhou one day, (2nd month in China - 6.5 years now) and as I passed the reception desk on the way to another class, one of the Course Consultants stopped me. I teach in a french speaking country. One evening 40 minutes after the class had ended, a mother rushed in to collect her daughter. She apologised saying "Sorry mais I am sage femme" I understood enough 'sage' means good and 'femme' means woman.

Horror Writing | Screenplay Writing | How To Write | Write Books | Read Write | Writing Tips | Writing Tools | Writing Community I replied haughtily "I too am a 'sage femme', but I at least remember to collect my kids on time" It was only after some explanation and miming that I understood that sagefemme is a midwife. A good example of not doing a literal translation.In my first year of teaching English here in Turkey, I made all sorts of amusing mistakes. Here is one. I was teaching suffixes, namely -ish, as in "like". (Okay, I admit, a pretty lame point to be teaching but I thought it was neato at the time and I was very VERY green at that time)