Love is poison

Today I had my best class so far. I taught two classes of business English this morning and used essentially the same lesson plan for both. I didn't have things organized perfectly for the first class so that one didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped. But I made some revisions and things went very well during my second class. The basic theme was "Interviews", so I had half the students come up with companies and the benefits they would offer employees while the other half thought about their qualifications and the benefits they wanted out of their jobs. Then I paired up employers with applicants and they held mock interviews for a few minutes before I had them get up out of their seats and switch to a new employer. After they did this a couple times I had them switch roles. Everyone was talking a lot and they seemed to be having fun so I'm very pleased with how things went.

The main problem I had with the first class was simply getting the employers and applicants organized in an efficient way. The desks are fixed in place and there are a lot of students, which makes moving them around very difficult. I think I have a method now where I can get them organized pretty quickly, but teaching in those classrooms has made me realize how important the physical set-up of a classroom can be.

Perhaps the best thing that happened this morning occurred while I was taking roll. I take roll at the beginning of every class and today, when I came to a girl whose English name is "Happiness", I decided to go off on a brief philosophical tangent. I wrote on the board "what is happiness?" and then asked for feedback. The students answered with things like love, family, money, friends. I inquired further into their responses and listened as some of the students argued that money or love didn't matter while others argued that they mattered the most. Many of their comments were in jest, as they would laugh after speaking out against family or friends.

But at one point there was a brief moment of silence and as I was writing some student's comment on the blackboard, I heard a girl's voice issue from the crowd of students with "love is poison". I broke out into laughter and all the students started laughing with me. I don't know if all of them understood what it meant, I would be surprised if they actually did understand it given my experience so far with their English speaking abilities. But everyone enjoyed it nonetheless. "Love is poison" was followed by another female student who replied that "maybe love is paradise". I wrote that comment on the board as well and upon seeing them together, I was struck with the thought that we had come upon the beginnings of a song. That song would probably turn out to be an 80's hair band song ("Maybe love is poison, maybe love is paradise"), but a song nonetheless.