Lesson Plans Not To Be Reused. Seriously.

I’ve been saving this post for a while, until I had enough pieces of flair to flaunt on my boyscout uniform at the mall.  Sure, my experiences outside of the classroom are much more significant in the re-telling of this year’s story, but there have definitely been a number of entertaining classes that are worthy.
Note: This is in no way a guide for future ESL teachers.  Do NOT teach like this… haha.  These lesson plans only worked because I did them when my students knew me well and were comfortable with me.  If any other teacher tried this right off the bat, their class would probably just stand up, leave the classroom, and call their parents crying.  I wish I was joking.

[Remember this video from two years ago??]

This month of April started off with every student’s favorite school holiday.  April Fool’s Day.  It’s translated here as “Lying Day,” which I think limits the range of practical jokes here in Vietnam… but, that’s not important.  I played a pretty terrible and amusing joke that I’ll just tell by copying and pasting a g-chat I had with my friend, Jess.

me: So you know how there’s some websites out there that have these games, and you play them thinking they’re your average game, but then some scary picture of the exorcist girl pops out and screams at you?
Jess: GOD yes
me: or something scary pops out when the game has your full attention
Jess: that’s the worst trick in the world.
me: yep.  Well, I did it for every one of my classes.
Jess: haha!
how mean!
god, I bet they flipped out.
me: hahahaha oh that’s not it
this is pretty terrible and i haven’t told anyone yet
but 3 kids have peed their beds at night in the past week
Jess: !!!!!
hy!!
me: anyway, it’s not entirely my fault, they just keep wanting to show it to their friends…
Jess: you’re terrifying these children.
me: and so we’ve done it maybe like 10 times this past week
Jess: that’s just how kids are.
me: to new people each time who they all really want to see scared
and i have AWESOME reaction videos.
so so funny.
Jess: ha, that was gonna be my next question. you have to post them on your blog.
me: haha so yeah, that’s taken up most of these past two weeks. my kids trying to scare each other
Jess: god, your kids sound so fun.
me: only it gets worse and less tricky as more kids know the joke
because they’re just the worst liars.
i forget if i was that bad at lying when i was young.
Jess: hahahhaa
me: they just wont shut up when someone’s doing it and totally give it away, or some of them will be like “yeah keep going!” and have their ears plugged.
Jess: awww. that’s really adorable.
me: meanwhile, i just think “You kids actually think you’re being clever/sneaky right now?”
haha its pretty funny.
Jess: that’s so amazing.

This is the best reaction video that I’ve got.  My kids ask to see this video about 5 times a week.  The new kid watching it is Quang.

And this is a picture of my kid Trung, proudly boasting the fact that he had to wash/airdry his mattress the morning after.  Don’t worry, kids in Vietnam don’t really have a sense of embarrassment… or at least, that’s what they all tell me.

I had really fun food lessons in my classes recently.  Who doesn’t like to learn about foods?

teaching my children the importance of ice cream flavor vocabulary.

For two of my classes, I had them watch my friend Nathan’s movie called, “Carnivorous Plants” that had Mary and I acting in it.  For those of you haven’t watched it, it’s basically about a child couple that get into an argument about what to eat for dinner.  Mary wants to eat meat and I want to eat plants.  After being fed up with Mary’s suggestions and being possessed by my insatiable hunger, I end up stabbing her and feeding Mary her own meat (kim-chi in a bed of ground beef.)  You’ll have to contact Nathan for the meaning behind his movie.

The ladies at the fried bread stall know me well now, so they decided to throw in an extra 10 fried ones that time. I carried 70 fried breads home in my backpack, and it will never be/smell the same.

Anyways, I thought it would be fun to ask my classes to do writing assignments about it, to write down what they thought the director’s artistic interpretation was (in my oldest class, I’ve been really advocating interpretation of art/music.)  Someone in my oldest class said that thought it represented the impurity of food when it starts turning into desire and gluttony, and all appreciation for food as nourishment is lost.  For my middle school class, I just had them write down their feelings after watching the movie.  Ten of them said, “It was really scary.”  A few others said, “Teacher Hy, you looked like a pretty girl with your long hair.”

another bowl of bun bo hue, this time with crab loaf and steak chunks.

For another class, I threw away all my boring vocabulary reminder activities about foods about 10 minutes before my class.  Then, I separated my class into two groups, had one group write down all the meats they knew, and the other- plants.  After I did that, I showed them a clip of Nick Cannon’s Wild ‘N Out, and put the two teams in different corners facing each other.  I put on some instrumental rap music, showed them how to bounce to the music while leaning onto their teammates’ shoulders, and had them rotate and rap, “I like to eat meat/plants, my favorite meat/plant is ________!”  Every time one team finished their line, I’d encourage that team to scream, “OHHHHH!!!” while the other team shook their heads, cross their arms, and gave sassy expressions.  Probably my favorite line was when one of the plant team members said, “I like to eat plants, my favorite plant is EGGPLANT!” to Dr. Dre’s “Ain’t Nothing But A G Thang.”  It just flowed really well.

Snails at the Snails Shop. Those big pots behind there? FULL OF SNAILS SNAILS SNAILS

A few weeks ago, I had them make their own menus and take turns being the customer/waiter.  After the waiter would take down the customer’s order and repeat it back to them, the rest of the class would do an incredibly stressful countdown from 10-1 while the waiter ran to the “kitchen” and prepared their meal as fast as they could, keeping in mind good presentation (the “kitchen” consisted of Fanta soda, sesame crackers, jelly cups, and kettle-corn).  Sometimes the waiter would forget to clear the table from the last pair, and the customer would complain about how filthy the restaurant was.  Other times, the kids decided to keep their Vietnamese restaurant etiquette in mind, and the customers would scream at their waiters with their demands.  Most of the boys ordered, “Everything on the menu!” and when the waiter would come back with their food, they would complain that it wasn’t enough.  It was quite a silly day.

The day I made a delicious breakfast of french toast, homefries, eggs, and buffalo-ranch sauce.

a close-up for all you gluttons. look how crispy themz iz... mmm...

Minh Thanh, that sneak.

When my parents sent over their latest care package, they also sent a bunch of old pictures of me- with almost every single one depicting me in a different extracurricular activity/accomplishment.  I’m not sure if they consciously did this or not.
Anyway, I used these pictures for my classes to teach vocabulary and American culture.  They each had to pick a couple of pictures and then ask me questions about them in English.
One of my students picked a picture of me leaning over in an awkward pose about to run in a race for my middle school’s track & field team.  When I initially saw this, I thought:  “Wow, track & field pictures are kind of terrible.  It’s not exactly the most exciting sport to photograph, especially when you’re an amateur parent photographer in the bleachers.  I look extremely awkward in this and I’m not even doing much.”  Anyway, unsurprisingly, that student’s question was, “What are you doing?!”  I didn’t think about how I would answer this question until then.  I then proceeded to try to explain what track and field was, and why I would ever want to run around in circles.  They were confused to say the least.
Another one of my students picked a picture of me from my first day of kindergarten.  It was another picture that I didn’t investigate fully, only to realize later that I had a terrible mullet in the picture and like most pictures from around that time, looked like a girl.  When the student asked me, “What grade were you in?”, she was also pointing to a young girl in front, who was of Caucasian decent.  I awkwardly said, “Umm… that’s not me…”  And the whole class didn’t believe me.  Then, I pointed out which one I was, and they were all so shocked repeatedly shouting, “Wait, what?!  Teacher Hy, you look like a little girl in this picture!”  I yelled at them saying, “Well, I’m the only Asian kid in that picture!  You could have at least picked the right girl!”  After that, I proceeded to draw pictures of mullets to try to get them to understand that hairstyle.  Once I realized they didn’t appreciate it, I said, “Okay, fine.  I look like a girl.  My siblings cut my hair like that so kids like you could tease me in the future.”
Another noteworthy picture was one of my homecoming dance pictures, posing with a group of friends and their own dates.  The student asked me, “Who was getting married?”  Then, I explained to them that it was a school dance, which made them extra confused.  I believe I spent the last 20 minutes of that class teaching them about school dances/prom, explaining to them the etiquette of treating your date and to ask someone to prom you had to actually say the words, “Will you go to prom with me?”  I also explained to them the idea of the homecoming court, the Prom King/Queen, and also demonstrated what a slow dance entailed, obviously to the song “Unbreak Your Heart.”  They laughed a lot and fell down to the ground a lot, but I’m pretty sure I sold them the idea of prom, complete with it’s ridiculous concepts.

My youngest class was reviewing numbers last week.  We played that game where we would pick a number, for example, “three,” and we went around the class counting in order, while each student, who had a three in their number, had to scream wildly.  The screams were of typical child decibel level, and it was pretty funny because I’m sure some of the other staff/students outside of the room were a little concerned.  One round, there were two students left taking turns counting their numbers, and one student said, “30!” and then almost immediately after (realizing she had said a number with a three in it) she screamed louder than any child I’ve ever heard.  I stopped the class/game and made a point to say to my kids, “Wow.  Never have I ever seen someone so scared of the number 30.  Congratulations.”

I didn’t think of doing Easter lessons during the school week, but that Easter Sunday, my director/boss asked me to explain the story of Easter to my kids.  I had no preparation before this and so it came out rather awkwardly, sometimes stopping in the middle of sentences when I realized it sounded like I was preaching to a bunch of atheist kids, and would confusingly switch topics to eggs and bunnies.  After that failure, I remembered about Easter egg hunts.  I completely forgot how big of a part that was in my childhood, so I decided to try to pull one off here in Vietnam.  Of course, there are no plastic egg shells to be found in this country, so instead I recruited a team to draw/color paper eggs and tape candy to the back of them.  That night, a few of the older kids and I hid them all over the shelter, and we had an insane Easter egg hunt, only Vietnamese style without the baskets, which resulted in tons of sweaty candy held in kids’ shirts/pants.  I kindly rejected all offers of candy saying, “No… it’s for you, buddy! “

They.make.eggs.for.work.

And then there was Earth Day.  I forget how I thought about this holiday as a kid, but it seems like children think of this day as “The one day we constantly yell at each other to throw garbage in trash bins.”  For my youngest class, I showed them Wall-E, which seemed appropriate, but later I discovered they didn’t believe trash could really affect their environment.  This viewpoint could also be supported by the fact that they hid all their plastic candy wrappers under their seats/in their desks/out the window for me to pick up after the movie.

Anyway, that Sunday, they had the most fun experience a child could ever ask for in celebrating Earth Day… a day of weeding at the shelter!  Yes, let’s celebrate Earth Day by making the kids weed all around the shelter.  I took a lot of pictures of angsty emotions that day.

This reminds me of the Gelada baboons of the Ethiopian Highlands.

These furry hats are too much.

Minh Thanh is really lazy. haha.

There are weird patterns to these.

This seems like it would be an online dating website, you know, for young children.

Duc will just continue to shrink in my eyes.

And this is a Korean soap-opera. (Ugh! My man will never care about me, all he does is wrap sticks with mystery materials!)

girls' meeting. (about BOYZ.)

That day was an especially angsty day for Thuy.

Feelings of joy for Earth Day.

A Perseverance Poster.

A "Youz Ugly" Poster.

EARTH

Angst/Appreciation for the Earth.

The less efficient Edward Scissorhands of Vietnam.

Environment Girl Power!

The girls had more stamina.

Linh's best puffy face.

Vien's best pervy face.

Loan. So emotional.

Watermelon Women's Club.

I accidentally laughed out loud a lot during this presentation about the environment, because I had forgotten to erase "Man vs. Machine" from my class, and it was in the back of all the photos.

But, I have to admit- the volunteer group that did the Earth Day workshop in the shelter redeemed themselves a few days later, by giving the kids prizes and holding a drawing/recycled light source competition.  I just didn’t enjoy it because they asked me to be the photographer and signaled me about every 10 seconds to photograph each and every certificate-handing and speech to document their community service.  I felt used and abused.  I don’t think the experience of photography is fun when you’re constantly told what to take pictures of… whatever, I’m over it.  I still got to take embarrassing pictures of my kids, which is what matters most in life.

Super battery-operated spinning candle? Why, sure!

A super light-up birthday cake box.

Pippy Longstockandle?

we play this game where I greet them and they hide under the nearest table.

This is the new director's child, who is exceptionally adorable.

I didn't even notice it was painted like a watermelon. Maybe they didn't either.

watermelon in candlelight

It would seem like their reactions were to a scary ghost story, but nope- it was about the environment.

Dao is a handsome chap.

and they screamed and bowed to the lord.

post-watermelon candlelight.

Uh, half of the kids got eaten by the King of Darkness.

my friends and I walkin' home from some frat party. *~*~*Some of the best memories are the ones we can't remember~*~*~* Love 2 My Crew! (ok, i got carried away...)

Tu (right) has the best threads ever.

Conclusion: I have to say- I used to kind of hate the “showy” part of teaching, to teach with the major goal of keeping your kids’ attention.  But, since my recent upgrade in energy here,  the wildest entertainment energy just flows out of me.  Teaching gets unbelievably easier and less painful after you’ve done it for a while… moral. said. did. done.

(I never got to put up this video from Phu Quoc Island…)

~ by Hy Huynh on April 25, 2009.