A Delicious Abuse of Power

So I broke one of the cardinal rules of teaching at Future School today. But if it works out, it'll be totally worth it.

As part of the immersive English teaching philosophy (TM), we are supposed to discourage our kids from relying on their Chinese, and make them speak in English as much as possible. We're trained to come up with creative "punishments" for Chinese being spoken in class when not necessary for instructions or something of the like.

But I threw all of that out today because the chapter I was covering dealt with recommending food.

I went ahead and told them to recommend me delicious Chinese dishes in Chinese. It wasn't all bad... the English form was there: I recommend/suggest ________ (insert strange Chinese dish).

And I mean, I made them try and translate it for me into English afterwards anyway. I also doubled my no Chinese strictness for the rest of the lesson. Made the little dudes and dudettes sing the class a song if they spoke too much. They hated it. I loved it - especially when one of them broke into Chinese Hip Hop.

Basically, all of the Foreign Teachers have been relying on a tattered piece of paper I have in my wallet that I got on our second day here. I'm sure I've written about it before. Now, we've got two - and some strange new food to try: like celery and lilly. Apparently you eat the lilly and it's delicious. I'll let you know.

Some might call it an abuse of power. I call it a necessary evil.

And probably an abuse of power at that. Ah well, at least I'll be well fed.

On another note, this is the first of many school related stories that you'll be able to find here under the label of "Look Into The Future". Ominous and misleading, I know.

I actually have another great school related story that I'll post real soon, I just need to get home and put a picture on the computer because it's quite necessary for the full effect of the story.

And remember... don't tell anyone about this, or I won't tell you how to order celery and lilly!

- S