For Spacious Skies

U.S. States My Students Guessed Were the Largest

In The Order That They Guessed Them

Canada
Mexico
Los Angeles
Virginia
Brazil
California
George W. Bush
Alaska

Q&A

Questions My Students Asked Me, When Told They Could Ask Anything

What do you think of Indonesia?
How do you buy a gun in America?
Do you like Led Zeppelin?
Will Seung-Hui Cho's body be buried in America or sent back to Korea?
Why is your face so red?
"Sunburn"? What does that mean?
Do you have a boyfriend?
Do you really drink baby's blood in your church?
What Indonesian foods do you like?
When a woman has an abortion, doesn't she regret it?
Who would win in a fight: American rappers or the Japanese yakuza?

Stranger In a Strange Land

One of the many problems with teaching in a foreign culture is that it’s so, well, foreign. It hardly increases my credibility in the classroom, or my control, that half the time I don’t have any clue what’s going on—“Where are you going? What did that announcement on the PA system just say? Why are you sitting on each other’s laps?” Moreover, most of my students lack either the English skills of the confidence—I’m not sure which—to explain to me precisely why they’ve pushed all their desks into a big group in the corner when they’ve got a whole giant empty classroom around them; the best they could give me was to nod vigorously when I asked, I thought sarcastically, if they just really liked each other. (Though, come to think of it, that may be the real answer.) Thus, I am mostly reduced, in these situations, to nodding, still confused, and saying, by way of changing the subject, “you kids are weird, you know that?”

It’s not very culturally sensitive of me, I know. But they are weird, though I can never figure out what is Indonesian culture and what is just 15-year-old culture; at this point, they are equally foreign to me. In one of my tenth grade classes, for example, the students have all ganged up to mock one of their peers: every sample sentence, every dialogue, and every writing assignment they produce is focused on the unfortunate Jono; when, for example, they were asked to write newspaper articles for the headline “Disaster Strikes Semarang,” a good half of the articles, I swear, were about Jono escaping from prison and kidnapping babies; Jono, through his family’s restaurant, poisoning everyone; and, perhaps most creatively of all, Jono growing to giant size and stomping on the city, Godzilla-style. Trying to be a good teacher, sensitive to the feelings of my students, and trying to combat what I thought was simply 15-year-old culture, I heavily censored the articles I chose to be read out loud for the class, and, as the kids wrote sample sentences on the board, I assiduously followed them, erasing “Jono” and substituting the ever-classic “Bob.”

But I constantly second-guess myself: is this because they are fifteen and cruel, or is this because they are Indonesian? My American sensibilities tell me to encourage everyone to “play nice” and not get their feelings hurt, but Indonesia has, I’ve noticed, a much stronger culture of teasing, and I, clueless as I am, never know when comments have crossed the line. When I came to class last week, there was a new decoration in the classroom: a collage of pictures of Jono, along with a song someone had written about him and his family’s restaurant, and then a list of comments solicited from each member of the class. I didn’t understand all the lyrics—something about how spicy his meatballs are—but I definitely understood the comments below: “Jono is so hot!” and “This makes me love him more!” and “His meatballs are delicious!” I spent a good ten minutes of the class period reading though this, thinking, basically, “Huh?” It all seemed to be highly sarcastic, but it’s hard to tell in a foreign language--I mean, maybe his meatballs are the best in town.

So I sidled over to my partner teacher, hoping she could shed some light on this. “Look,” I asked, “in America this would probably be considered over the line and hurtful to Jono. I mean, do they like him or not? Does Jono mind? Are teachers here expected to stop this behavior? Is this okay????”

“Oh,” she said, “Yeah, they don’t really like him. They say he smells bad. But he’s kind of a class mascot now! It’s funny, right?”

I wasn’t so sure. “How does Jono feel about it?”

“I asked him last week,” she said, which reassured me that an adult figure has tried to take responsibility. “He said he doesn’t mind. He just imagines that it’s all happening to someone else. So, see? It’s okay!”

Ouch. I find that more heartbreaking than “okay,” but the other teacher just smiled cheerfully and went back to grading. For me, though, reluctant to just ignore things like this but equally reluctant to interfere, what with my surface-only understanding of this culture, I have a hard time figuring out my responsibility, both as a teacher and as a person. This goes for everything, not just this class—every time a student misbehaves, every time they say something strange, every time I walk into class to find them choreographing disco dances, I face the questions again: stop it? Ignore it? Join in? For now, I just shake my head and sigh. These kids are weird, you know.

Drawing a Blank

Last week, while discussing the history of segregation and the civil rights movement, I drew a map of America on the whiteboard, partially so the students had a sense of where these events took place, and partially to emphasize that “my place,” whatever that means, was never segregated. I don't pretend to be any great hand at drawing, but the map was, I thought, recognizable--the big pointy thing in the north is Maine, the big pointy thing in the south is Florida and the rest is all one big rectangular(ish) blob.

The students all stared at my map for a minute, squinting and turning their heads to the sides, trying to make sense of it. Noticing their confusion, I tried to explain: "Okay, guys, this is the U.S. Sort of. But look, here's Maine! And Florida! And see that bit pointing out at the bottom? That's Texas. And Washington is in this corner. And this thing that looks like a foot is Louisiana. And oh! wait! Let me add Massachusetts. That's my place. Sort of. No segregation there. And...oops, I forgot Michigan. That's okay, everyone does. See? See? Do you see it now? It's America!"

One of my students, in the back row, raised his hand, his face very serious. "Miss, what was your grade in your high school drawing class?"

"Well," I replied, "high school is different in America. We're not all required to take a drawing class. I, for one, took Latin instead of art."

"Oooooh," the class said, in chorus, all nodding their heads. "That explains a lot."

Thanks, kids.

Thank You, Hollywood

Miss Hannah: All right, today we're going to talk about how to give advice. Advice? Do you know that word? Nasihat. Who can tell me some phrases for giving advice?

Students: You should...you had better...why don't you...I think you must...etc.

Miss Hannah: Good. Now what are some phrases we can use for accepting advice?

Students: Thank you....good idea...I'll go and do it right away...I think you're right...etc.

Miss Hannah: Excellent! Now what if we think it's bad advice? What can we say?

Students: I think I'll try something else...thanks anyway...that's a bad idea...etc.

Miss Hannah: Good. Now--

Andrew: Miss! Miss! I know something else you could say!

Miss Hannah: Yes?

Andrew: Shut up, asshole! Do you think I'm stupid? I wasn't born yesterday! No way I'm trying that! Now piss off!

Miss Hannah: nearly dies laughing

Schrödinger's 10th Graders

Imagine this Gedankenexperiment, if you will: a class of tenth-grade EFL students working in groups are, while completing the task, either speaking English or not speaking English. Until the teacher moves closer to supervise their work, the students must be considered in a state of quantum superposition, in which the states of "speaking English/following directions" and "not speaking English/ignoring directions" overlap. It is therefore the observation of the teacher itself which affects classroom behavior and forces the students into a definite linguistic state.

(ps: I know this isn't really quantum theory at all. It should involve decaying nuclei and radioactive substances, but, much as I occasionally wouldn't mind forcing the students into a dead state, I don't think the principal would look kindly on hydrocyanic acid in the classroom.)

(pps: I'm kidding. I would never kill my students. I love the little brats dearly, even when they are in the state of "not speaking English/ignoring directions.")

On All Your Houses

Miss Hannah: Today, class, we're going to talk about going to the doctor. Who has ever been to the doctor?

[all raise their hands]

Miss Hannah: Good! Now why do we go to the doctor? What kinds of sicknesses can he treat?

[all are silent]

Miss Hannah: Okay...what kind of symptoms does a doctor look at?

[all are silent]

Miss Hannah: Please, people, we're just brainstorming vocabulary. Someone just tell me a disease.

[all are silent]

Miss Hannah: Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

[all are silent]

Miss Hannah: All right. You, in the back. Name a disease. Any disease.

Julio: What?

Miss Hannah: You've been to the doctor, right? What were you sick with?

Julio: What?

Miss Hannah: What disease, or sickness, did you have when you last went to the doctor?

Julio: Oh! I had smallpox, Miss.

Miss Hannah: [laughs] Yeah, kid, you and the Indians.

Julio: What?

Trick or Treat

As discovered in last week's lessons about Halloween,

Vocabulary Words My Students Knew Without Me Telling Them

corsair
eye patch
peg leg
hook
coffin
pale
vampire
fangs
zombie
cutlass

This from kids who can't put together a complete and correct sentence about what they did over their holiday. I don't get it.

Dear Abby (Indonesian 10th Grade Edition)

Dear Abby,

I have a problem. I am destroy my neighbour house. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Worried

Dear Worried,

You should reborn the house. You shouldn't kill your neighbour, because you will get caught by the police.

Sincerely,

Abby

****

Dear Abby,

I have a problem. I have friends. He angry with me. What to I do? Before he is my best friend. After we got quarreling, we close we other. What to I do?

Sincerely,

John

Dear John,

You should kill your friend and your life will be beautiful. But another alternative is you should say sorry to your friend.

Sincerely,

Abby

****

Dear Abby,

I have a problem. My dog always bites a peson who laughed near it, and screamed like a wolf after did that. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Dog Lover

Dear Dog Lover,

You should teach your dog. If your patient runs out you can kill your pet!

Sincerely,

Abby

****

Dear Abby,

I think I have a confusing problem. My friend follow the Antichrist. And he said that I must follow his religion or he an all of his friend will make me as a victim offering. What should I do?

Sincerely,

ZZZZZZ

Dear ZZZZZZ,

You should pray to your friend. You shouldn't don't have a friend like that. You should ask to your friend to go to the church. If he is not agree you should kill him.

Sincerely,

Abbbbbby

Something Old, Something New

As part of our morning activity at the marina, I asked one of my twelfth grade students to tell me something funny. He thought for a minute, and then his face lit up with an idea.

A: Miss Hannah, can I ask you something? It's a little personal, so you can choose not to answer.
Miss Hannah: Go for it.
A: Are you still a virgin?
Miss Hannah: [Silence. Do I say yes and dispel the stereotype of whorish Americans, thus fulfilling my role as a "cultural ambassador" and blah blah blah, or do I keep quiet, thus maintaining the appropriate teacher-student social distance?] Ummmm....
The other students: Whoa! I don’t think you should ask her that!
Miss Hannah: Well, I’m not married yet, so yes, I am.
A: Okay, cool. Did you know that Alex here—pointing to one of his friends—is not?
Miss Hannah: Ummmm….
The other students: Whoa! I don’t think you should tell her that!

Yeah, I guess that's something funny, I'm just not sure why that's the first idea that sprang* to mind.






*Suggestive word choice edited because, come on, people! My grandma reads this blog!

Erratum

Remember how I mentioned I had a student who answers to the name of Christ? I take it back. He's named Christ, but that's his first name. He actually answers to his middle name: Conan.

That's right. Christ Conan. I asked if I could call him "The Barbarian." I don't think he got it.

One Yell Is Not Enough

My "teaching" job was pretty much a joke this week. One of the physics teachers was taking the students on a mini field trip to the Marina, for a morning of games and activities, and he invited me along as one of the supervising teachers. This means that instead of sitting in a classroom desperately trying to speak slowly enough for the students to understand, I sat on a bench by the Java Sea and desperately tried to speak slowly enough for the students to understand.

The activity was that each group had to invent a group cheer of some kind--coordinated cheer routines, or "yel-yel," being a popular pastime among the students and teachers both, for some strange reason--and then I had to give them a task to complete, in English.

The physics teacher wanted me to force the students to be creative and funny, so I simply told them to make me laugh. There was only one rule, I said: they had to speak English. (Upon hearing this, one of the boys' eyes lit up. "So we can tickle you?" he asked. I quickly added another rule.)

I have a healthy sense of humor, so the students were mostly successful at their task. I heard some Indonesian jokes, translated into broken English with my help, I saw some funny dances, and I even watched a silent skit. (This, in my mind, violated the "must speak English" rule, but since these poor girls took about 30 minutes to invent the skit, I decided not to mention it. The fact that it wasn't at all funny was another problem I overlooked on that basis.)

In any case, the best part of the morning was definitely watching the students perform their cheer routine. I don't know about you, but, in the past, when I've been assigned to create any sort of creative cheer expressing esprit-de-corps, it has always ended badly. Either the best minds of my team could only invent something lame--"Go yellow group, go! Yay."--or, at best, one girl sang something cute and well thought-out, while the rest of us stood in the background and tried to clap rhythmically. (And, in my case, mostly failed.)

Not so with these students. Each group, including a group made up entirely of 17 year old boys, had long, involved routines—songs with different verses sucking up to each of the supervising teachers, including a stanza for me, in English, to the tune of James Brown's "I Feel Good"; lengthy chants that sound better in the original language, about how "physics is hard but we know that with time and patience we'll master it"; and intricate dance steps that were definitely more than just clapping rhythmically. Not only can I not imagine a group of American high school seniors performing, or even inventing, these routines with such creativity and good cheer, I definitely cannot imagine any American high school senior boy shimmying--shimmying! In broad daylight! Sober! In front of a teacher!--with a smile on his face.

My only regret is that I didn't have a camera.

I've Prepared Charts and Graphs

So, for yesterday's 12th grade lesson (and tomorrow's 11th grade lesson, because I'm lazy), I took the students to the language lab for a listening exercise. They had been there the period before mine, listening to TOEFL practice tests, mostly simple conversations about the weather and how to get to the airport; they were also clearly bored out of their minds. So, to pep things up a bit, I brought in the Postal Service song "Nothing Better," and had them fill in the blanks on the lyrics sheet.

I left the classroom feeling like the coolest teacher ever. Not only did we get to review vocabulary, and then discuss who was right in this situation, both valid teaching techniques, the students loved the song. The first time through, a few of them bobbed their heads or quietly tapped their desks. The second time through, about half the class was stomping their feet or rapping their desk or clapping along; several students were even singing along, in that awkward I've-forgotten-I'm-wearing-headphones-and-so-shouldn't-be-singing sort of way.

These kids are seriously cute. And they like the Postal Service. Suddenly, being stuck in a room full of 17 year olds for the next eight months doesn't seem quite so bad.

(Just wait until next time, when I bring in Joanna Newsom.)

You Naughty Earth Specimens

I have, in one of my tenth-grade classes, a boy whose voice sounds exactly like Marvin the Martian, minus the British accent. When he first talked today, I had to lean over to the real teacher and ask her if that's his real voice. It's fantastic, but it's also rather hard to resist the urge to giggle and teach him phrases like "Oh goody! My Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator."

(Surely there must be some situation that phrase could come in handy...)

Take That, Everyone Over 30

From a recent twelfth grade student presentation: "Aging is the process of becoming not useful."

I think she meant "youthful," but I kind of like it better this way.

Who Like Many Indonesians Only Has One Name

Nearly any newspaper article about Indonesia will, at some point, include the phrase "who like any Indonesians only has one name," or, in some variations, "who like many Indonesians only uses one name." (Try me on this and see. I guarantee it.) I'm not sure why this is the accepted phraseology--perhaps Reuters releases it every so often, just to remind reporters never to stray from the formula--but you can try me on this and you'll see. I guarantee it.

It's true that many Javanese do only use one name. My school, though, being a Christian school, is attended mostly by ethnic Chinese students. (The ethnic Chinese minority tends to be Christian and rich, while the ethnic Javanese majoirty tends to be Muslim and poor. You can see why there's a lot of resentment.) In any case, the Chinese students usually have plenty of names: three, or four, or even five. The amusing thing is the type of name, though; as I've worked this week on memorizing the names of my students, or, at the very least, on forcing them to wear nametags, I've noticed some basic groupings of names, which, since I'm obsessed with onomastic and assume that everyone else is equally interested, I'll share with you.

1. The traditional (Javanese) names. We do have a few ethnic Javanese students, with a few ethnic Javanese names. Thus, we have a Dewi and a Sri, a Hendra and a Nugroho. I've also encountered a wide variety of nicknames that sound like nonsense syllables to me: Dede and Jojo and Bowo. With these kids, I peek at their nametags.

2. The traditional (Biblical) names. It's a Christian school, so one should expect Christian names. My classes are filled with Andrews, Stephens, Davids, Esthers, and Marthas. They pronounce them a little differently, but the kids don't seem to mind if I don't roll the "r" in Andrew.

3. The traditional (American) names. I'm curious about these ones--why, exactly, do they have these names?--but I'm always happy to see them, as it's much easier for me to pronounce and remember names like Jane and Melissa and Edward.

4. The traditional (Russian) names. These ones confuse me. Why on earth, in Semarang, Java, Indonesia, do I have students named Ivan, Alexei, Sonia, and Natalya? Is this some sort of crazy Russia-China-Indonesia Axis of Generally Disagreeable, or were their parents just reading too much Dostoevsky?

4. The nontraditional (Biblical) names. These Christians tend to be a little more adventurous in selecting Biblical and saints' names; I have an Obed and a Nehemiah, a Bonifacius and a Bernard, a Yehezkia and an Abednego. I dig these kids; I mean, who can't like someone named Abednego? What's more, I even have, in one eleventh grade class, a certain tall and solemn boy, always seated near the back of the classroom, who answers to the name "Christ."

5. The nontraditional (American) names. Everyone's heard stories about Chinese foreign exchange students in the States who adopt bizarre English names, thinking they're normal. (I have, at least, and so I will assume, once again, that everyone shares my experiences.) Kaneeneenie, for instance, had a roommate who went by "Phyllis." Alea has a friend of a friend (FOAF) who chose "Mitzie." My school has its fair share of that type as well, and I'm finding that it's hard to keep a straight face meeting students named "Vienna," "Antartika," and "Queenina." (She goes by "Queenie." Is she a Berenstein Bear?)

The prize so far, though, goes to a pair of tenth grade boys in one of my classes, who sit next to each other and are clearly best friends: Hans and Franz. Now, if, like my students, you've never seen the old SNL sketches, you won't appreciate the self-control it took for me not to laugh and instantly call them "girlie men." It was tough, but I succeeded. I think congratulations are in order.

(I did not, however, successfully resist the temptation of laughing and instantly saying, "I'm going to PUMP [clap] you up." I think the students were confused. Then again, they don't really speak English, so confusion is pretty much the default in the classroom.)