Tom and Jerry the Jesus Twins and other stories from Teaching English

If you recall, the dice-rolling Jesus twins, I just realized last night that their names are Tom and Jerry. I had been thinking of them as Jerry and Tom, and then I realized how they must have gotten their names and I almost died. Anyway, on Tuesday, I had their class again and the concept I had to teach was "the same" and "different." It was really great because Tom and Jerry always dress alike. So I said, "Tom and Jerry's shirts are the same. Tom and Jim's shirts are different." Tom who is the better behaved twin understood at once, and just said, "Oh, I see." However Jerry, who sits in the opposite corner from his brother, just said I don't understand. So I explained how my shirt and his was different and his shirt and his brother's were the same. When he figured this out, he stood up from his chair and said (in Chinese) "I understand! My shirt and his shirt are the same, but my shirt and his(or her) shirt are different!" which lasted about a minute and a half.

That class is funny, but they've caught on to the fact that I can understand Chinese and they've caught me out a couple times.

My last class, which was older, K8-82, which means they are junior high school students, is also a handful. I actually had to send a kid out into the hall today simply because I was tired of dealing with him. However it made the other kids better behaved since they knew I would actually send kids out. Although all the kids test badly, they can speak English so they insult both me and each other in English. It's nice to have kids that can and do speak English though. The pages I had to teach were about parties. So I asked them to think of things that they would have to do to prepare for their party. Among some of their sentences, "I have to buy a gun." "I have to buy the Harry Potter DVD/VCD/book (there was a lot of vehement disagreement about this)." I did sort of enjoy the class though, and there are some good kids in it. Willy is probably my favorite so far, he's a good student and doesn't say much, but he's a nice kid. Although I do have a soft spot for Tina, who is one of the loudest girls and constantly tells me to hit the other students. Most of the girls here are so shy it's nice when some of them have some spunk.