Job Discussion Forums

[Twisting in the Wind]

One Martin Luther King Day I decided to show the movie "Mississippi Burning" to a group of mixed Asian advanced ESL students. I thought it would be a good way to introduce them to the history of the Civil Rights struggle in the U.S.

After the movie I turned the lights on, and the whole class wa just weeping and bawling their eyes out. And these were MEN. After attempting to debrief them, it became clear that the movie had made them conscious of racist feelings in themselves and they all needed mass therapy, something I was not equipped to provide, either on the fly or otherwise. That surely has to rate as one of my all time, weirdest classroom experiences!

[tom selleck]

Dog, Batyndale,

Well done! I transmorgraphically guffawed with my whole brain.

Once I was conducting a class, and while marking papers, I hear a word in Xinjianghua I recognized, but at that time I had yet to learn.....

SHAOZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I turned around, and saw a full blown fire starting in the classroom.
One of the kids was playing with a lighter and paper.

I thought shaozi meant fire. I learned later that day it really meant "crazy".

[ChinaMovieMagic]

Twistin' in the Wind...bizarre...and inspiring...
It shows to me there's a deeply sensitive/human(e) core that many of us
"I-am-a-Rock" macho guys...have covered up...or suffocated...

Speaking of Mass Therapy, at Nanjing U. I participated in a 3-day Intensive Workshop on PsychoDrama, with an expert from USA, and assisted by a Prof. from Taiwan. The event was not for therapy, but for the experiential learning of professionals in teaching/administration/etc.

Most of the mid-career/middle-aged folks did not know each other. A few came w/colleagues. As I looked around at them--the standard clothes, the self-conscious smiles, the bureaucratic grayness--I sensed that the sessions would be more like face-protected passive lecture-listening, rather than like dynamic emotional happenings.

I was wrong. By the end of the day, through the skillful use of Role Play and Imagination, the therapist had created a psychic Safe Zone for folks, allowing them to open their hearts/feel their pain...without feeling vulnerable.

As with the movie viewers, there was the powerful em-pathy...feeling together...something quite sincere...powerful stories...lots of pain out there beneath the polite smiles...

When we FTs get pissed off at students/school administrators etc., it's worth remembering: "Don't Blame the

[ChinaMovieMagic]

MenWeb - Battered Men Official Policy: Blame the Victim
Official WA policy: the perpetrator is not to blame the victim, unless the
perpetrator is a woman. ... Blame the Victim. � 1998 by Bert H. Hoff. ...
www.menweb.org/gjdvblam.htm - 25k - Cached - Similar pages

Anyara-Essays: Never Blame the Victim !
Scapegoats and Scapegoating: Never Blame the Victim. ... We blame the victim in
order to feel more in control. Who is to blame? We all are. ...
koti.mbnet.fi/neptunia/essays/sgblame1.htm - 8k - Cached - Similar pages

Page 2 -- Domestic Violence & The Courtroom
Domestic Violence & The Courtroom Understanding The Problem... Knowing The
Victim. Do Not Blame The Victim A victim of domestic violence ...
aja.ncsc.dni.us/domviol/page2.html - 5k - Cached - Similar pages

The Observer | Comment | Barry Coates: the blame the victim summit
... Observer comment extra The blame the victim summit Western leaders promised
so much to Africa and delivered so little. Yet the greatest ...
observer.guardian.co.uk/ comment/story/0,6903,746390,00.html - 41k - Cached - Similar pages

Unemployment: Blame the Victim?
... Home >> Working Papers Series >> ILR working papers >> Unemployment: Blame
the Victim? Unemployment: Blame the Victim? Jonathan ...
netec.mcc.ac.uk/WoPEc/data/Papers/eslilrdps031.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

[Twisting in the Wind]

Oh! Got another one (I have a billion of them).

One day I was playing the Secretary-Messenger game with my class of mixed ethnicity adult learners. I had divided them up into teams and was motioning for one member of each team that I had selected to come outside the classroom with me to listen to a sentence (they'd then run back in and say --or scream--or whisper) the sentence they 'heard" to the writer of their team....anyway I kept trying to get this Cambodian guy, who didn't, I think, have much classroom experience, either here or in Cambodia, to come outside. He kept lingering and hesitating by the door.

"Come on, come on," I cajoled, with the other three students already outside. I was a master at whipping them into a frenzy for this game.But he just kept lingering inside, seemingly unsure of what to do.

Now, almost frantic, I was screaming, "Come on, come on--close the door, close the door--indicating when he came outside, which I expected him to do imminently, he should close the door so I could commence with saying the sentence for them out of earshot of those left in the classroom.

"Close the door, close the door," I shrieked.

He did.

The only problem was that he was STILL inside.

I, uh, stood there speechless for a minute. Like, what planet was this person from? I opened the door, reached in, and yanked him out.

[Twisting in the Wind]

[crespo]

I taught an English camp in Taiwan. For 12 days straight, I had the same 18 students, aged 16-23. The first day was pretty fun as it consisted of me making a fool of myself in an attempt to get a reaction out of them (hthey were, typically, dead). At any rate, at the end of the camp, they had all come together and were great friends. On the last night, a campfire was held and pretty soon the whole class was in tears at the thought of returning home again (these were serious tears...sobbing would be more appropriate). I really didn't know what to do...i mean i liked them, but i wasn't about to start crying. Then this fellow turns to me with tears in his eyes and pleads plaintively "say something".
I froze...I started fumbling about how i had a really great time teaching them, etc. They weren't satisfied, they wanted more and their crying made me feel guilty for some strange reason. So, I then I basically started babbling...I used every difficult word that i could muster and went on for about a minute...all with a look of great concern in my eyes. They looked at me and they nodded solemnly. maybe i'm a bas*ard, but it appeased them.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

A student told us a Bizarre story last night at English Corner:
'Our English teacher gave each of us students the same Christmas present. A NAIL. She told us that the death of Jesus was for us...Later we threw the nails out the window..."

[Old Dog]

RED ALERT - RED ALERT - ALERT, I SAY - ALL STATIONS, ALERT!

Someone is impersonating China Movie Magic. The short posting (above) could not possibly be from the original of that name.

[Twisting in the Wind]

[Twisting in the Wind]

Now the little buggers at English corner are probably REALLY confused. No wonder they mix up Santa with Jesus. This teacher has probably started a whole new thread of false Christmas symbolism in the minds of those students with that dumb nail.

[ChinaMovieMagic]

China's history is chock-full of has bizarre-religion classroom experiences. After centuries of contacts/history, there's still the generic use of "Foreigners" "Christians" etc.

Imagine how it was/is for the 1st generations of Chinese in Christian classrooms. They receive the 'Word of God' from the teacher, and the selective page-turnings seem to prove the doctrinal directives. Then another Christian church opens up another Christian classroom, on the other side of town. It's taught by another foreign Pastor, who tells the folks that the "other" Christian church doesn't quite understand the "word of God...". And the Chinese are left feeling confused...

Low QC...

BIZARRE?

[Old Dog]

Now here's something that set me back on my heels so much so that I put it in the bizarre category:

In Junior Middle School Grade 1, I do a little play called "Teachers' Day". Lily and Lucy meet Jim and Tom who are carrying brooms. The boys say they are going to their foreign teacher's home to help him clean his house because it is Teachers' Day. The boys say the ft's house is very untidy but the girls suppose that this might be only because he is so busy. "Oh, no!" reply the boys. "He spends all day watching TV and playing computer games." The girls ask if they may come and help. The ft greets them. The children say, "Happy Teachers' Day" and then Jim explains that Lily is going to sweep the floors and Lucy is going to wash the dishes. FT asks the boys what they will do. Jim says he is going to watch TV and Tom says he is going to play computer games with the ft - who promptly throws the boys out and rewards the girls.

So we were discussing the characters. I explained that the girls were very good and helpful girls but that the boys were very lazy creatures.

I, the teacher, had declared the boys to be lazy and, being in China and having spoken as the teacher, the matter of the boys being lazy should have been settled.

But no! To my utter amazement, a boy in the second row raised his hand to speak, declared the teacher, in fact, to be the lazy one. The boys had thought about doing some work and being helpful - but the teacher, it seems, does not even give thought to doing any work but just lets his house get more and more untidy. All this expressed a little more simply, of course.

When China produces a student like this, times are changing. Bizarre!