As previously mentioned, I taught a class the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," today and it was an eventful time. More eventful than I would like, but, hey, at least I have an interesting story to tell all of you!
This is another tale of woe from Meg-the-idiotic-teacher, but at least this time, no drugs were involved! I had two classes today, and the first one was me teaching about Thanksgiving again. This went pretty smoothly because I've done that lesson a bunch of times now, and I know what words they do and do not know. (For example, they have no idea what a Pilgrim is or why anyone would pardon a turkey.) It was a fun class, I always enjoy meeting new students that I haven't worked with before.
But onto Rudolph. I thought it was a good song because it's very American, and fun. I downloaded a version of the song that I thought would be good and I brought the MP3 with me on my USB key. However, I failed to remember that France isn't always "tech" friendly, and I had no way to play said song. So I had to sing it, many times, in front of this class of 6th graders... by the end of my first rendition of the song, I'm sure I was bright red, and I had that I-want-to-sink-into-the-floor feeling again. But the students were sweet and clapped when I finished, which made me feel slightly better. After I sang the song and we went through what the song meant, I had a little game for the kids. The night before I had wrapped a present 14 times (but I failed to count when I was at it) and every time a student got a question right, they got to unwrap a layer of the present. Whoever got the last question right won the cheap candy bar I had bought at the grocery store the night before. The quiz was super easy... I asked silly things like, "What color is Rudolph's nose?" Which was good, because the English level of the students wasn't very high. The tension mounted and mounted as we got down in layers, the students began to be very enthusiastic about answering questions when they thought the next layer would revel the gift. I think they were a little let down at what it actually was, but in the mean time I think they enjoyed it. Then we proceeded to sing through the whole song, which required more singing by me, which went alright, although I cracked a couple of times on some notes, and went slightly off pitch some of the time too, which mortified me. I had the students repeat lines after me for them to get the pronunciation, they did a good job on all but one line. "Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say..." They replied, and I didn't quite understand one word so I repeated it, "foggy." They responded, "Froggy" "Foggy!" I said a little more clearly. "Froggy!" They replied. I laughed a little and then moved on. It was pretty funny.
Here's where my biggest mistake comes into play. I didn't think it would be fair to give just one child a present and leave everyone else out, so I had picked up two bags of sweets the night before so that at the end of class everyone would get something little. What I failed to notice was that the package said, in French, that each candy had a little firecracker in it. You know the kind you pull, it sparks and makes a loud noise? Yep, I gave some of those to a bunch of 11 year olds. The teacher told them to wait until they were outside to play with them, but, of course, they didn't listen, and every time I heard one of them pop, I winced slightly at my own idiocy for bringing them in the first place. I'm pretty sure in the USA they would have been considered weapons, and I would be fired, or if I was student, expelled. Gotta love France. And speaking of, this will be my last post on here for a while, because I'm going home on Thursday for Christmas! I can hardly wait, so, I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas/ whatever other holiday you celebrate or don't celebrate at this time of year!
Happy Holidays.
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