Let's play a game. Which of these is not like the other one?
This is one of my classes taking their final exam. One of my students was a Buddhist monk. How cool is that. It was my second class with him.
He was such a pain in the ass. Always talking on his celphone, flirting with the girls, picking fights with other boys in the hallway and talking back to me.
I am joking of course. He's a Buddhist monk. It's difficult to describe him without falling into cliche, but he truly was the most pleasant, nicest and hardest working student. An absolute joy to have in the classroom.
I will miss this class. It's a class for students who failed grammar and/or writing and/or reading in the previous term. Some of them are here because they're spoiled, lazy knuckleheads who don't give a crap. I will no doubt see some of them next term. One girl in this class failed it for the third time. This term she missed 17 of 20 classes. Last term she missed 14 of 20. This isn't math class, but the numbers make it pretty clear what the problem is.
As you can see most of the other students were teenagers. Most of them are not knuckleheads. They are good students with poor test-taking skills. I drill them mercilessly on how to take a test. Anyone who knew me as a child knew that I was something of a savant when it came to taking tests. My scores on the GRE were so high I actually called Princeton to make sure they were right. I am an inexperienced teacher and my grammar knowledge is weak but one thing I can teach is how to take a test.
The monk's name is Korng Kheourng. In Cambodia the family name comes first, so his given name is Kheourng. The spelling might seem a bit, well, overdone to an English speaker, but there are 60 distinct vowel sounds in Khmer, more than any other language. I would spell it Kung, but that doesn't give a sense of the little nooks and crannies of the vowel sound. Most transliterations are British English, not American, so the 'r' is the soft British 'r'. The American spelling would be more like Kheouhng. There. Now you still can't pronounce it!
(One more example of the complexities of the language: Behind Kheourng is a boy named Ly Hour. Behind him are two girls, Kaneka and Kannika. To me the names look the same but apparently they are pronounced differently. Luckily, Kaneka asked me to called her Ka, thus saving us all a bit of confusion.)
I was hoping to get a photo with Kheourng on the last day of class. His attendance was perfect. The only day he missed was the last day! That's why I am using this surreptitious photo I took during the exam. He sent me an email thanking me for helping him pass. I assured him that he didn't need to thank me, that he passed because he did the work. But I still got a little verklempt.
I should note that I get emails and facebook messages from other students as well. One of the many reasons I like my job. In Baltimore, by way of contrast, students thank you by not shooting you.
Overcrowding of classrooms is a problem in virtually any school. Here you can see we have 23 students crammed into a space big enough for a hamster. This led to a cultural lesson for me. At the beginning of the term I had them do an exercise where they had to walk around and interview their classmates.
Kheourng was enthusiastic and diligent, as always, but he stayed on the fringes of the group. I understood that this was because monks are not allowed to touch women (and vice versa, of course). If a woman gives an offering to a monk, for example, he will hold out his scarf and she will put it on the scarf. He was standing off to the side to avoid contact with the girls in the class. This much I knew. The girls interacted with him but at distance as respectful as the confined space would allow.
One day a student arrived late to class. Naomi is a typical teenage girl so of course she always sat by her friends. On this day, though, there was only one seat left, which happened to be next to Kheourng. I motioned for her to take the seat but she shook her head no and stayed put. The look on her face said no effing way!
Without a word Ly Hour (who was sitting with his friends) got up and took the seat next to Kheourng. Naomi took the seat Ly Hour vacated. The students understood that Naomi would not sit next to Kheourng out of respect. The students in this class were respectful to me but I was constantly struck by the deference they showed to Kheourng. When they did the interview activity they had to write down each other's names. Those who spoke to the monk wrote his name as "Mr. Kheourng".
The little boy in the front of the photo is Vathna. If you try to say that 100 times I assure you you will not pronounce it correctly. (I still can't!) He was the youngest student in the class (14) but one of the best, a whipsmart, sweet, funny kid who is always, always smiling. He's a tiny kid, but he has the deep, husky voice of a man three times his age and size.
One of the practice writing assignments I gave them was to write about a childhood friend. We had spent a lot of time talking about adjectives to describe personality. I tell my students I want to see the vocabulary we discuss used correctly. Vatha wrote "My friend is generous. After class he alway give me snakes." Snacks. We all had a little laugh over that one.
I teach more classes than most of the other teachers (for the money, of course) which means I have hundreds of essays to mark during exam week. You can only read 15-20 before your brain turns to mush and you have to walk away for a few minutes to recharge. In the staffroom you can hear teachers periodically bursting into laughter at something they've read in an essay. We're not being mean. Some of the mistakes and turns of phrase are genuinely funny. I remarked that when my students' writing can't make me laugh I'll know it's time to move on.
On the exam for this class the students had to write about their best friend. A girl named Sothea, who you can't see in this photo, wrote at the end. "I love her so much. People think we are lesbian. But I say no she just my friend."
Still, my favorite is the student who started an essay on the advantages and disadvantages of traveling abroad by writing "Traveling abroad is one of the best ways to visit another country." Can't argue with that.
This is one of my classes taking their final exam. One of my students was a Buddhist monk. How cool is that. It was my second class with him.
He was such a pain in the ass. Always talking on his celphone, flirting with the girls, picking fights with other boys in the hallway and talking back to me.
I am joking of course. He's a Buddhist monk. It's difficult to describe him without falling into cliche, but he truly was the most pleasant, nicest and hardest working student. An absolute joy to have in the classroom.
I will miss this class. It's a class for students who failed grammar and/or writing and/or reading in the previous term. Some of them are here because they're spoiled, lazy knuckleheads who don't give a crap. I will no doubt see some of them next term. One girl in this class failed it for the third time. This term she missed 17 of 20 classes. Last term she missed 14 of 20. This isn't math class, but the numbers make it pretty clear what the problem is.
As you can see most of the other students were teenagers. Most of them are not knuckleheads. They are good students with poor test-taking skills. I drill them mercilessly on how to take a test. Anyone who knew me as a child knew that I was something of a savant when it came to taking tests. My scores on the GRE were so high I actually called Princeton to make sure they were right. I am an inexperienced teacher and my grammar knowledge is weak but one thing I can teach is how to take a test.
The monk's name is Korng Kheourng. In Cambodia the family name comes first, so his given name is Kheourng. The spelling might seem a bit, well, overdone to an English speaker, but there are 60 distinct vowel sounds in Khmer, more than any other language. I would spell it Kung, but that doesn't give a sense of the little nooks and crannies of the vowel sound. Most transliterations are British English, not American, so the 'r' is the soft British 'r'. The American spelling would be more like Kheouhng. There. Now you still can't pronounce it!
(One more example of the complexities of the language: Behind Kheourng is a boy named Ly Hour. Behind him are two girls, Kaneka and Kannika. To me the names look the same but apparently they are pronounced differently. Luckily, Kaneka asked me to called her Ka, thus saving us all a bit of confusion.)
I was hoping to get a photo with Kheourng on the last day of class. His attendance was perfect. The only day he missed was the last day! That's why I am using this surreptitious photo I took during the exam. He sent me an email thanking me for helping him pass. I assured him that he didn't need to thank me, that he passed because he did the work. But I still got a little verklempt.
I should note that I get emails and facebook messages from other students as well. One of the many reasons I like my job. In Baltimore, by way of contrast, students thank you by not shooting you.
Overcrowding of classrooms is a problem in virtually any school. Here you can see we have 23 students crammed into a space big enough for a hamster. This led to a cultural lesson for me. At the beginning of the term I had them do an exercise where they had to walk around and interview their classmates.
Kheourng was enthusiastic and diligent, as always, but he stayed on the fringes of the group. I understood that this was because monks are not allowed to touch women (and vice versa, of course). If a woman gives an offering to a monk, for example, he will hold out his scarf and she will put it on the scarf. He was standing off to the side to avoid contact with the girls in the class. This much I knew. The girls interacted with him but at distance as respectful as the confined space would allow.
One day a student arrived late to class. Naomi is a typical teenage girl so of course she always sat by her friends. On this day, though, there was only one seat left, which happened to be next to Kheourng. I motioned for her to take the seat but she shook her head no and stayed put. The look on her face said no effing way!
Without a word Ly Hour (who was sitting with his friends) got up and took the seat next to Kheourng. Naomi took the seat Ly Hour vacated. The students understood that Naomi would not sit next to Kheourng out of respect. The students in this class were respectful to me but I was constantly struck by the deference they showed to Kheourng. When they did the interview activity they had to write down each other's names. Those who spoke to the monk wrote his name as "Mr. Kheourng".
The little boy in the front of the photo is Vathna. If you try to say that 100 times I assure you you will not pronounce it correctly. (I still can't!) He was the youngest student in the class (14) but one of the best, a whipsmart, sweet, funny kid who is always, always smiling. He's a tiny kid, but he has the deep, husky voice of a man three times his age and size.
One of the practice writing assignments I gave them was to write about a childhood friend. We had spent a lot of time talking about adjectives to describe personality. I tell my students I want to see the vocabulary we discuss used correctly. Vatha wrote "My friend is generous. After class he alway give me snakes." Snacks. We all had a little laugh over that one.
I teach more classes than most of the other teachers (for the money, of course) which means I have hundreds of essays to mark during exam week. You can only read 15-20 before your brain turns to mush and you have to walk away for a few minutes to recharge. In the staffroom you can hear teachers periodically bursting into laughter at something they've read in an essay. We're not being mean. Some of the mistakes and turns of phrase are genuinely funny. I remarked that when my students' writing can't make me laugh I'll know it's time to move on.
On the exam for this class the students had to write about their best friend. A girl named Sothea, who you can't see in this photo, wrote at the end. "I love her so much. People think we are lesbian. But I say no she just my friend."
Still, my favorite is the student who started an essay on the advantages and disadvantages of traveling abroad by writing "Traveling abroad is one of the best ways to visit another country." Can't argue with that.
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