How relaxed? Well, when I proposed a lesson based on little more than eating chocolate chip cookies and reading trashy magazines, my supervisor actually went for it.
So I showed up at school the next day armed with three-dozen cookies and a stack of Cosmopolitan and Glamour magazines.
It was the first time any of these kids had seen an American magazine. They grew more and more animated as they flipped the pages. Most of the text was too difficult for them to read but there was one English word they all recognized immediately. They pointed to the headlines and bombarded me with questions:
“What does ‘sex fantasy’ mean?”
“What does ‘the sex he’ll die for’ mean?”
“What does ‘naughty sex tricks’ mean?”
I have never seen these kids try so hard to read English. Each article opened up a new discussion. The Japanese teacher even got into the spirit of things and volunteered to translate some of the more raunchy paragraphs. I don’t think she was censoring herself either. While translating an article about the “Girls Gone Wild” phenomenon, she kept pretending to lift up her shirt and flash the students.
Why can’t my classes always be this fun?
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