Tee-cha! Tee-cha!

Sometimes I seriously question the material I am being asked to teach my students.

The level of my students’ English varies – some of them have lived in English-speaking countries and speak almost fluently, while others seem to understand only half of what I’m saying. It is hardest with my lower-level middle school kids; it seems that if they don’t have a solid grasp by the teenage years, it’s a lot more difficult for them to move forward. The younger ones just soak things up like sponges and are far more fearless about speaking.

Some of the material I am teaching is particularly difficult, and fairly amusing. My most difficult class has been Memory English with some painfully shy teenagers. Class usually starts out like this:

“How are you guys doing today?” I ask in my “teacher voice” (louder and far more energetic than I really feel).

Silence. Bored, blank stares.

I try a different approach. “CHARLIE! How was your weekend?”

He stares at me. Looks kind of petrified.

“Okay, Charlie. Was your weekend GOOD, or BAD?” I ask, doing thumbs-up or thumbs-down gesture.

Now he looks positively fearful. Still no response.

“GOOD, Charlie? Or BAD? FUN? Or NOT FUN?”

At this point, even if they understand me, they’re probably thinking Who is this crazy girl waving her thumbs around and talking to me like I’m deaf?

Still, no response.

And let’s be clear here: this is the class where we are reading a book about The Salem Witch Trials. That’s right – The Salem Witch Trials. I can’t get the kids to tell me if their weekend was good or bad, but I’m going to explain words like Puritan, trial, bewitched and religious freedom?!

The best part came when we were looking at a picture of the women accused of being witches. An angry crowd of Puritans is pushing her toward the edge of a hill.

“Okay, guys, what do you think is happening in this picture?” I ask. “Does the girl look happy or sad?”

Blank stares.

Then, a hand goes up.

“Tee-cha! Tee-cha, what is that thing by neck?”

I glance at the picture. The girl clearly has a noose around her neck.

“Ummmm….I think that’s a rope,” I say, hoping they won’t pursue the topic.

“Rope, tee-cha? Why rope?”

“Uh, yeah. Um, I think the girl might be hanged if they think she is a witch.”

“Hanged, tee-cha? What means hanged?”

Please picture a half-dozen innocent Korean children staring up at you, wondering what on earth a rope is doing around this girl’s neck in the picture. I really thought the low-point was when I had to explain “hanged” to them, and the scared looks that followed. But no. The low point really came about twenty minutes later, when we were writing practice sentences.

The example sentence read “People today may not understand the Salem Witch Trials, but it is important for them to learn about it.” The class was then supposed to construct a similar sentence with the words “Foreigners” and “Columbine.” The sentence they were supposed to put together would read something like “Foreigners may not understand Columbine, but it is important for them to learn about it.”

“Tee-cha! Tee-cha! Columbine? What Columbine?”

“What the hell kind of material is this?” is what I’m thinking at this point.

So then I had to explain to my innocent Korean students about Columbine and listen as they gasped in horror.

“Tee-cha? Tee-cha, students shoot tee-cha? Shoot students?” they asked, horrified.

And they still don’t understand what a Puritan is.