An excerpt from my student teaching journal during my student teaching at St. Peter's Preparatory, an all-boys Jesuit high school in Jersey City.
Today I definitely had two of my funniest teaching moments yet. First, today was the start of “winter dress code,” which requires either a shirt and tie or school logo turtleneck with either a sport coat or a school logo sweater. This does not, however, keep the students from expressing themselves through their clothing. In the second section of German 1 when we played the review game (where students have to answer a quick question in order to sit down), I noticed that one student had a very colorful plaid sport coat on, and since we had just learned the word “bunt,” which means colorful or multi-colored, I couldn’t pass it up. When I got to that student, I asked him in German what color his jacket was. He couldn’t remember the word “bunt,” so I asked if anyone else in the class did. The word “bunt” had first come up about a week ago when students were asked to introduce their classmates to classroom objects by indicating what color they were. Some former student had given Ryan a very colorfully decorated trash can (including German flags and a picture of Ryan wearing Lederhosen), so when the student started to say that “der Mülleimer” (the trashcan) was red, yellow, black, white, blue, green, etc., I told the class it was “bunt.” Today, when the student I called on couldn’t remember this word and I asked the rest of the class, one of my weaker and less attentive students suddenly raised his hand saying, “I know this one! I know this one!” Pleasantly surprised, I called on him. “Okay, <student>, what color is <first student>’s jacket?” Enthusiastically he answered, “Der Mülleimer!!”
The second great moment happened when I was reviewing how to ask how someone is and introducing ways to respond. I had drawn 5 faces on the board showing varying degrees of happiness or sadness. Under each face were one or more corresponding words or phrases students could use to answer the question “How are you?” Under the happiest one, I had written:
super
wunderbar
fantastisch
Rather than simply telling students when they could use each answer, I asked students how they were actually doing and then decided to throw in some hypothetical situations for them to respond to. When I asked the kid with the plaid jacket how he was doing, he said, “Mir geht’s gut.” (I’m fine/well.) To prompt him towards the next category, I said, “Okay, stell dir vor - imagine - du gewinnst das Lotto. Wie geht’s dir dann?” (Imagine you win the lottery. How are you then?) The student: “Mir geht’s super wunderbar fantastisch!!!” He had no idea that the words I had listed were choices, so he just read them all off, which, in the context of hypothetically winning the lottery, was hilarious.
The second great moment happened when I was reviewing how to ask how someone is and introducing ways to respond. I had drawn 5 faces on the board showing varying degrees of happiness or sadness. Under each face were one or more corresponding words or phrases students could use to answer the question “How are you?” Under the happiest one, I had written:
super
wunderbar
fantastisch
Rather than simply telling students when they could use each answer, I asked students how they were actually doing and then decided to throw in some hypothetical situations for them to respond to. When I asked the kid with the plaid jacket how he was doing, he said, “Mir geht’s gut.” (I’m fine/well.) To prompt him towards the next category, I said, “Okay, stell dir vor - imagine - du gewinnst das Lotto. Wie geht’s dir dann?” (Imagine you win the lottery. How are you then?) The student: “Mir geht’s super wunderbar fantastisch!!!” He had no idea that the words I had listed were choices, so he just read them all off, which, in the context of hypothetically winning the lottery, was hilarious.
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