Suicidal Hamster?

Anyone who graduated from McDowell High School and took Spanish, knows what I mean when I talk about Rzod's participation grade. She would stand in the front of the room with her clipboard and seating chart and tally the number of times we spoke. She then would average the number of times the whole class spoke and then we got a grade based on the number of times we spoke compared to the average. Some people hated this; I mean absolutely HATED this. Well, I hope that you are not one of those people because I have become Rzod. I have a clipboard (zebra print mind you), and I have a seating chart, and I tally, and I average. To be completely honest, I expect that these types of grades will make up at least half of my students final grades. I have done this in just over half of my classes, and most of my students have responded well to it. Only one student has refused to speak at all. In this blog I want to share some of the discussion I had with one of my 3a classes today.

Describe an event in your life that made you feel sad:

My students shared stories of broken limbs and stolen bikes, but never in my life have I heard so many sad "my pet died" stories. I mean, I guess I was asking for it, but the stories I heard today range from sad to strange to downright awful. One or two cats ran away-pretty standard. Sad, but not earth-shattering. Someone aunt's took her TURTLE for a walk in the garden and the TURTLE ran away-not so standard. How does a TURTLE RUN AWAY? This baffles me, still, after eight hours of thought. Another's grandpa put his turtle on the balconey in the morning, and promptly forgot about it and left it there all day. At the end of the day, there was baked turtle. I'm sure it was appreciative of the daylight at first, but in the end, probably not so much. The most awful story was about a girl who had a hamster whom she loved very much. She loved this hamster (it's name was seven syllables long or I would share it) so much that she gave it a piece of yarn to make it happy. This is not quite what happened. Instead, she noticed that the hamster had stopped moving. Why you may ask? The hamster had somehow managed to wind the yarn around its neck and affixate itself. So yes, in my high level English conversation class today I talked about hamster suicide.

The students also got into heated debates about violence in cartoons and the message that they send to children who watch them and the world's biggest problems. However, the most heated debate was about which of the sexes was superior: men or women. They were passionate and loud and downright hilarious. They went back and forth about how strong men are and the many great inventions they have created over the years, but how women could not invent things in the past because they didn't have enough education to enable them. They talked about how men could not handle the pain of childbirth, but how God says in the Bible that men should be the head of the household. One student, Matuesz (my marijuana loving, the Germans coming student), went so far as to say that if men could procreate without women, then he would love to live in a world where there were no women. He was promptly put in his place by another student who said, "Then why are you with Ola?" Ola is apparently his girlfriend, who he was sitting right next too.

I hope that we are able to have such conversations for the whole year. It really was one of the best classes that I have had yet. The rest of the week looks like it will be controlled chaos. Tomorrow we have a choir concert during the day, so I actually don't have to teach at all, but I am going to go to the concert. Friday will be busy, in that I teach five periods in a row. But after that Sarah and I are off to Slovakia to visit the other ELCA teachers. I am really looking forward to seeing them and enjoying fellowship.

Blessings,
Colleen