I love English, but I love this more...

Today is Friday, and only one thing is more awesome than Friday at my job. The only thing more awesome than Friday is seeing a former student being successful at something new, especially a student you knew pretty well.

In the spring, I taught a class that was full of bright students. One of the brightest and hardest-working was a young woman from a Middle Eastern country. She was about my age, had moved to the US with her husband to study, and was a bottomless pit of questions about English. She was taking some continuing education classes at the university in addition to her English classes, and I helped her with her essays. At the end of the semester, she threw a party for her female teachers and classmates (at which I felt horribly under-dressed when I discovered that women who wear scarves and veils in public look like supermodels at home). She cooked for a solid day ahead of time and made everyone feel welcome and at home in her apartment. In short, she was an amazing student.

And then her father got sick at home. She had to leave in a hurry, just a few weeks before the end of the semester. And that was the last I heard from her.

Until today! I came back from lunch and she was standing in the hallway, apparently waiting around to see me. She had had a difficult summer at home, as her father had passed away. But she was back and studying full-time at the community college, in classes every day with native English speakers. She brought me a teeny bottle of perfume from her country and invited me to another end-of-semester party in December sometime. We hugged and she promised to come back and visit again.

And that is why I have this job. I love the English language, but more than that, I love my students. And I love reconnecting with the best ones most of all.

Language lessons

I decided last week that it would be fun to learn some basic phrases in all of my students' languages. My students get a giant kick out of listening to me butcher their mother tongues, which for me is the whole point of doing it - they enjoy being the teacher for a few minutes everyday. The hard part is that among my 30ish students, there are eight languages to account for. I do pretty well with Spanish, French, and Portuguese, and am not half bad at Japanese, but Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Sinhalese are hard. The Arabic-speaking men in my classes are the best cheerleaders; they try to think of mnemonic devices to help me and nod encouragingly as I try to cough and wheeze my way through some of the more difficult sounds. So far, this is what I have learned to say - good morning, goodbye, and thank you in eight languages:

Spanish: buenos dias, adios, gracias (I minored in Spanish, so this was a freebie.)

French: bonjour, au revoir, merci

Portuguese: bon dia, chau, obrigado

Japanese: ohayou, sayonara, arigato

Arabic: sabah al kheer, ma'a salama, shokran (one of my students said to think of "sugar" + "ran")

Chinese: zao shang, zai jian, xie xie (the intonation is the hardest part)

Korean: an-yong, an-yong (with different intonation), kam-sa-ham-ni-da

Sinhalese: suba udesanak, tata, stuti

Aren't I accomplished? Eight languages! Now if only I could remember all of them all the time...

Happy Valentine

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, so today I am celebrating with my students. I brought in those cheap Valentine cards and candy that elementary school kids give out. The ones I got are dog-themed and have pictures of dogs saying things like, "I'm yours fur-ever," and "You're the pick of the litter, Valentine!" I figured my students never got to have elementary school Valentine's Day, so I'm giving them all the cards and candy. 

One class down, two to go. In my first class, I was giving a quiz, so I gave them the candy first so they wouldn't hate me so much. And then one of them wrote the cutest thing ever at the bottom of her quiz:

Dear Emily (decorated with hearts and smiley faces)

HAPPY VALENTINE (more hearts)

Thank you always. (flower)

I love you and your class.

I heart you (flower, and she actually spelled out "heart")

I heart her too! See, this is why I teach. Because sometimes the students are mind-blowingly awesome.

I also got candy from another student, which was really sweet. I might get more before the end of the day, because international students, especially those from eastern Asia, are often big gift-givers. It's a nice perk of this job. But the "I heart you" totally made my day. 

Told You So

I did a peer review activity with my beginning reading/writing class today, wherein they were supposed to read each other's paragraphs about a famous landmark in their country and offer advice on how to improve. I gave them very specific questions to ask about the paragraphs, so they wouldn't get confused. Most of them finished earlier than I expected and then just sat around looking sleepy, but two of them, a Asian woman and a Middle-Eastern man, got into a hardcore grammar/spelling debate. It was awesome. It went kind of like this:

Asian woman: No, you can say, "There are a lot of buildings in there." You remember "there? Say "in there."

Middle-Eastern man: No, I think just "there."

Asian woman: No, is "in there." I know.

Middle-Eastern man (conceding to the better student): Okay.

Me: Actually, he's right. It's just "there."

Asian woman: Ohhhh...

Middle-Eastern man: What I say?!? Ha!

And later...

Middle-Eastern man: Teacher! Look. I write new sentence on new line (points) or same line?

Asian woman: Same line!

Me: She's right. Same line.

Asian woman: I win!

Middle-Eastern man: Curses! Foiled again! (Not really - he said something like "Aargh!")

It cracked me up that they were so into the activity, and obviously having a good time being competitive about it. That's one of my favorite things about my job: getting to see students from totally different backgrounds helping each other learn. I love being a teacher!

List-O-Rama

Wow, I either need to start updating more frequently or cancel the blog altogether. It's seriously been two weeks since I updated? Wow. I find I process my teaching experience best in lists, like "10 Awesome Things about My Students," "Five Things I Wish My Students Would Stop Doing," etc. So maybe I'll update in that format from now on, and it will make updating more frequently easier. It's weird that lists work for me so well - I'm really not an innately organized person at all. Maybe that's why I like lists - they make me be organized, which is something I need to be if I'm going to be a good teacher. So, here are some lists:

Five Hard Things About Teaching Beginners

1. I. Have. To. Talk. Like. This. And some of them still don't understand.

2. When my elementary vocabulary is exhausted and I am totally out of words to explain what I mean, some of them are still confused.

3. I have to repeat myself at least twice for every activity.

4. They are addicted to their dictionaries and/or pocket electronic translators. I secretly fantasize about smashing electronic dictionaries with a giant sledgehammer.

5. It's really hard to explain grammar to someone who isn't really sure what a noun is.

Five Awesome Things About Teaching Beginners

1. When they finally get something, the rewarding feeling is HUGE.

2. It's amazing to see how much they can communicate with so few words.

3. They ask really good, basic questions that make me think about English. Like yesterday, we learned a new word and one of them said, "Teacher, is it noun or verb?" I said, "Both," and he said, "BOTH?!? How I know?!?" That's a really good question that's really hard to answer!

4. They generally work really hard because they want so much to get better.

5. On the whole, they're just adorable :)

Five Hard Things About Teaching Advanced Students

1. They ask really hard questions, and they know if my answer is BS.

2. Sometimes they know more English grammar rules than I do.

3. They can be perfectionists. Like, they speak great English, but because they don't sound like Kevin Costner, they think their English is bad.

4. Sometimes they're not interested in knowing something unless it's going to be on the TOEFL.

5. I have to plan more for them to do, because they finish everything faster.

Five Awesome Things About Teaching Advanced Students

1. They understand almost everything I say, so we can joke around a lot more and I don't have to talk so slowly.

2. They ask really hard questions, which sharpens my meta-linguistic awareness.

3. I get to geek out on them, because I'm teaching them aspects of English grammar and communication that my beginners aren't ready for. Like the passive causative construction, which is what we worked on in my advanced grammar class today.

4. We can do fun things like watch "The Office" for cultural awareness lessons because they can actually understand most of it.

5. I get to be a little more of a friend and a little less of a mom than I do with my beginners, because they don't need as much help.

This semester, I am teaching a beginning reading/writing, an advanced grammar, and an uber-advanced listening/speaking class. Before now, I've mostly worked with intermediate students, so this is a good stretch for my teaching abilities. I'm really enjoying myself, and am frankly a little impressed that I'm able to communicate reasonably well with both groups. Plus, I just love my students. I hardly ever have students I don't like, but I'm continually struck by how cool they all are. I'll leave you with a sample of their coolness.

In reading/writing this morning. Working on using prepositions.

Me: So, how do we fill in this blank? We want to say, "Walk ___ the church. Walk..."

Student 1: ON the church!

Me (smiling): No, walk ON the church would look like this. (Draws picture on board of stick figure on church roof.)

Class: (Cracks up)

Student 1 (laughing): Oops.

Student 2: Spider-Man!

Successes in teaching this week

This is the last week of the semester at the community college and the ELI, and while it's definitely the most stressful time of the semester for me, it definitely has its rewards:

1. One of my community college students (a middle-aged guy returning to college) who was writing F papers at the beginning of the semester got an A on his last essay. He told me that all his grades in all his classes have improved as a result of being in my writing class.

2. Another community college student won a scholarship that I recommended her for. She wrote to say thank you.

3. I was asked to interview for a full-time lecturer position at the ELI. I applied a few weeks ago and thought it was kind of a long shot, since I'm a young teacher, but now I have an interview on January 17.

4. For the final exam at the community college, I asked them to write an essay explaining what grade they think they deserve. A lot of them said in their essays that my class was their favorite. I'm not sure if they were sucking up or not, but it made me feel good :)

5. One of my ELI students baked me cookies for the last day of class. We all watched "The Princess Bride" together and they laughed at the right parts.

These are the reasons I love teaching. It is really hard work, but the rewards are awesome.

Also, I'm in it for the free samples of international food. In the last two years, I've gotten to try all sorts of things I would never have even seen before. Best: Colombian arepas. Worst: actually nothing; most of it's good. Weirdest: Arabian coffee - strange herbal aftertaste. It's not a great reason to get into teaching, but hey, it's an awesome perk.

Why I'm here

I decided to start a blog because I think it will be fun. The English major in me loves to write, and blogging gives me an easy outlet for that, which I could potentially one day condense, publish, and live happily ever after. I just read "Twilight," and while I thoroughly enjoyed it, one of my parting thoughts was, "Hey, I could do that." I know it's harder than it looks, but I'm pretty sure the hero of my story would do more than look brooding and rescue the same accident-prone girl 15 times in a row.

So here I am, mainly to write for fun. I called the blog "Excuse Me, Teacher" because that's what I hear pretty much all day from the international students I teach. Their languages all have a respectful term for "teacher" that is less high-ranking than "professor," and I can't convince many of them to just call me Emily, so I get called "teacher" a lot. I think it's cute - not really accurate in terms of English usage, but very endearing. My officemate Melina always responds to "Excuse me, teacher" with "Yes, student?" but I just let them go along calling me teacher and counting on some future teacher to tell them not to. It's just too sweet.

So in this blog, I plan to share some of the adventures I have in teaching and also in the rest of my life. Anybody who's reading this pretty much knows me, so I don't have to introduce myself and say where I live, how old I am, etc. - actually, it's probably not a good idea to put that stuff on the internet anyway. As far as teaching goes, I teach English composition to college freshmen at the local community college, and English language skills to international students at our university's English Language Institute. I really enjoy both of my jobs, but teaching international students is really where my heart is - I love to make them feel welcome and comfortable in the US, and I love learning about their cultures. I love sharing the joys and wonders of the English language, which, as a native speaker, I think are plentiful. For example, I think it is absolutely brilliant of Southerners to invent "y'all." English is lacking a second person plural (i.e. the plural of "you," which plenty of other languages have), so Southerners, in our great wisdom, came up with one: "y'all." I think this completely disproves the "Southerners are slow" theory that so many people from up North seem to cling to, and makes our language more interesting. So as a proud Southerner, I teach it to my international students on the first day of class. Joy #1 of English.