Fare Thee Well Kid's Movie Class

This past weekend saw the end of my least favorite, yet most ridiculous class.

The "Kid's Movie Class" is a two hour class (of which I am only subjected to an hour of). The first hour sees the Chinese Teacher drilling in lines from a thirty second clip from some inane cartoon movie. I wish I kept some examples of lines from these movies to illustrate how... useful... this technique is, but alas I did not.

Then comes the second hour, where I come galavanting in, and try to keep the kids excited for another round of repetition. Did I mention these kids speak no english, so my goal here is to get them to mimic sounds, and not understand why the cow is using three syllable words and out of date slang? No? Oh, I should have.

After my first lesson, I quickly realized that it would be impossible to fill a full hour considering there are words and concepts in these clips that would be difficult for some of my higher level classes, let alone a class of disinterested and bored kids who don't understand an single word.

I tried talking to Tommy about this early on, but he assured me that it's simply a cultural thing. "We are two separate cultures, working as one." Or something like that. Oh, my bad... I thought I was wasting their time or something. Good to know listening to a prehistoric sloth lisping (Oh, Ice Age) is culturally valuable. Riiiiiight.

So, I took a very advance teaching method approach to this class. I spent the first half an hour of the class poking the kids in the head, making sure they stayed awake and upright as I made sure that they could at least kind of, sort of make the sounds I wanted them to.

Then? Then it was time for games. Musical chairs, telephone (interestingly referred to as Chinese Whispers in China), and my favorite time waster: The Basketball game.

The Basketball Game consists of me pausing the 30 second clip at a certain line, and getting a student to repeat it. This is difficult because if I miss the pause cue, I'm five lines away from the one I wanted. Oh well, rewinding will shave another few seconds off of the class. Then, the student gets to try and throw a ball into a basket from various positions in the classroom, resulting in more points for their team. And if they speak Chinese? Minus twenty points. This is especially hilarious, since their English vocabulary limits them to screaming "Good, good, very good!", "NO!", or the occasional breaking into song with Ricky Martin's "The Cup of Life". I couldn't make this up.

And then, bam. The hour is up, and I go eat lunch.

This has been going on for the past 18 weeks, and you know... I may miss the mind numbing pain of the movie class. Sure it was harsh watching the kids struggle with words they had no business struggling with, but where else would I get to watch a kid falling asleep next to another who is absentmindedly eating clovers off of a potted plant on the window sill.

Again, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

So goodbye Spongebob, goodbye movie class students whose names I never even got to know since I never had a role call and they never answered me when I called their names anyway, and goodbye half eaten plant.

You'll be missed.

At least until I get over it during my newly found hour off.

- Shawn


Pictured: The delicious potted plants, the kid who eats them, another bored student, the basket!, and Mr. Squarepants.