Humor in the classroom

Funny things that students have done or said:

My hair is growing out now and I have no one to cut it except myself so it's getting a little unruly, but they all really love my white person's hair and demand permission to touch it. That's the literal translation of how they ask it- Madame, I demand permission to touch your hair. Demand granted.

They all really love Justin Bieber and Hannah Montana and one day they asked me if I had seen them and I was like 'No. I'm not a child. I don't like them.' And then they asked me what "stars" I had seen and I thought about it for a while and realized I had seen only the stars/bands they had never heard of/would hate. So they started listing off people like Beyonce, Akon, Michael Jackson and a bunch of others and I was like...no, nope, no no. With each negative answer they got more and more angry and shocked until finally one of them asked Madame vous ne sortez pas? To which I laughed and said 'of course I go out, I just don't go to those concerts. Stars don't walk the street like they do here'. haha. Madame you never go out? oh children.

One day I was wearing a top that really accentuated my farmers tan and a student told me that I should stay out of the sun as much as possible and never tan because it looks really ugly. To which I responded 'haha!' The bluntness of these kids will never ceases to shock me. Really they just like it when my skin is as white as possible.
I was shaking a fellow professors hand today and he was like 'oh you have some chalk on your palm' and I said 'nope, that's just how my skin is' To which he laughed and probably didn't feel embarrassed about.

I had my first Informatique test and a few students wrote some really hilarious resposes. For example- How do you know that the computer is on? By the noise. (These computers are real old and some are very loud)
Name two activites you can do with a computer- one student wrote 'you can type texts.' Which is true and not at all funny except when they write here it's in cursive and they do their x's weird so texts actually looks like 'testes.' ha!
 Another response to that question- name two things you can do with a computer someone wrote- Tuer un president ou voler argent d'une banque. Kill a president or steal money from a bank. It was one of those moments where I wish there had been someone there to see it, like when you fall or do something else really embarrassing, but this was incredible. I read it two times and then immediately tried calling four people- none of whom answered. Curses! I'm sitting there staring at this answer thinking 'what the hell? I mean true you can steal money from a bank so I"ll give you a point for that but I'm worried about this president killing one....what the hell?' Finally someone called me back and I told them about the answer, they were equally and hilariously shocked. I actually forgot about that when I returned the papers, there were over 200 so sue me, so I have no idea what student wrote that. They could kill me somehow with a computer, I don't know.

There is a student named Dorcas, and whenever I read that name I laugh, because...Dorcas. Hilarious and it always reminds me of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

A student asked me if sirens were real. And I was like...sirens? half woman half bird? - No, sirens, half woman- half fish (apparently it means both in french) - Oh! mermaids! Nope, those aren't real. - Really? Because this guy said he saw them. -Nope, those are not at all real. Just a story. At this point I'm laughing and she's just looking at me so dejectedly which only makes me laugh harder. Crushing the dreams of young teens since 2010.

For my english test I had students write out numbers in letters like 63 is sixty-three. And they made some adorable faults like writing 'twoty' or 'sixtyeen' I got a lot of ' ten seventy' for 17, and a few wrote one fivety threety two for 1532. Haha, dummies.

Speaking of my English class, that's a new thing I took over for a teacher who skipped town. The first day, the directrice of the school walked me to class, which made me feel like a child, but she said to the students 'now she's volunteered to take over this class. What do we do for her?' And then I kid you not all 61 of them stood up, clapped and cheered for me, which made me almost die from the adorableness of 61, 9-11 year olds so excited for me to teach them english. Standing ovation. Beat that American teachers.

Also it's really funny teaching days of the week because in french you often don't pronouce h's and the 'th' sound is really hard for them. So they have a lot of trouble with Tuesday and Thursday or Three and Thirteen. It's really hilarious. Sometimes I jut make them repeat it over and over again and then laugh at them. Mean you say? They laugh at me about 80% of the time, I don't feel at all bad about mocking their inability to make the 'th' sound.

When I gave their first test back to them some of them may have cried. Haha, I remember when I cared so much about school that I cried about tests or getting in trouble. Oh the memories.

Also I gave them a tongue twister- sally sells seashells down by the seashore. They thought that was really hilarious and were equally amazed at how fast I could do it. Their minds will be blown once wood chucks start chucking wood.