Decked out in black
Oh yes, it's another teaching update! Are you bored yet?
So I did manage a day completely in black--woo! I threw on a button down overshirt his morning because it was cold, not intending to wear it to class because I could swim in it. It grew on me, though--and I was told I was "schnazzy"--but there was, unfortunately, that whiff of cat piss that I always have to watch out for. (RAR KITTEN!) So off with the button down it was! But it's a good thing to remember and yes! I just spent a paragraph rambling about my choice of shirts. Wait 'til you hear about the shoe debate.
But I'll spare you for now and just say--it was a decent class! I do need to plan a bit more to say, because fifty minutes goes for longer than I realized and also, I probably talk a little fast. And I was a bit all over the place, but even so, it was a fairly coherent lecture. (I know! How does that work? But even for the digressions I managed to hit all the points I wanted to, so...some coherency!) E and I did an exercise in the "Mac v. PC" vein, where he was a prescriptive English teacher and I was a descriptive linguist. (Um. That sounds like the start of some sort of weird academic pr0n. Or my brain is in the gutter.) (Or possible a "Now They Fight Crime!") It was pretty fabulous: he yelled grammar rules at them, I provided an actual language counterexample. Except for that cliché one, where I was like, "Do I know any clichés? In speech? Damn, all I got is proverbs! Oh well."
They also talked. My students talked to me! One student was sorta sharing his life story, but you know, that's okay right now, because they talked! Even a student in the back! E was all amazed. I was kinda jazzed. A taught me last semester--not really taught, but in the way he taught, ya know?--that you need to start a dialogue with your students as quickly as possible. So it's good to see that it's working. And while they were a bit tentative, someone did yell out "redneck" when I asked what they associate with speakers of the Southern dialect of English. YES! TALK TO ME LIKE THAT! WOO!
So all in all, not too bad. It made up for the fact that my fancy bra is making a tent in the middle of my shirt again, rargh.
Now to decompress and look at some Latin. Also, boy make-outs. \o/
So I did manage a day completely in black--woo! I threw on a button down overshirt his morning because it was cold, not intending to wear it to class because I could swim in it. It grew on me, though--and I was told I was "schnazzy"--but there was, unfortunately, that whiff of cat piss that I always have to watch out for. (RAR KITTEN!) So off with the button down it was! But it's a good thing to remember and yes! I just spent a paragraph rambling about my choice of shirts. Wait 'til you hear about the shoe debate.
But I'll spare you for now and just say--it was a decent class! I do need to plan a bit more to say, because fifty minutes goes for longer than I realized and also, I probably talk a little fast. And I was a bit all over the place, but even so, it was a fairly coherent lecture. (I know! How does that work? But even for the digressions I managed to hit all the points I wanted to, so...some coherency!) E and I did an exercise in the "Mac v. PC" vein, where he was a prescriptive English teacher and I was a descriptive linguist. (Um. That sounds like the start of some sort of weird academic pr0n. Or my brain is in the gutter.) (Or possible a "Now They Fight Crime!") It was pretty fabulous: he yelled grammar rules at them, I provided an actual language counterexample. Except for that cliché one, where I was like, "Do I know any clichés? In speech? Damn, all I got is proverbs! Oh well."
They also talked. My students talked to me! One student was sorta sharing his life story, but you know, that's okay right now, because they talked! Even a student in the back! E was all amazed. I was kinda jazzed. A taught me last semester--not really taught, but in the way he taught, ya know?--that you need to start a dialogue with your students as quickly as possible. So it's good to see that it's working. And while they were a bit tentative, someone did yell out "redneck" when I asked what they associate with speakers of the Southern dialect of English. YES! TALK TO ME LIKE THAT! WOO!
So all in all, not too bad. It made up for the fact that my fancy bra is making a tent in the middle of my shirt again, rargh.
Now to decompress and look at some Latin. Also, boy make-outs. \o/