What the Heck Wednesdays: Baby Time!

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy... 

A few days ago, I was hanging out in the corridor supervising break time when a group of second graders ran over to me in a frenzy.  

Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! Miss Erin! 

Ayşe Melek took over:

"Miss Erin! Nurdan..." 

(gestures frantically towards their classroom in case I wasn't aware that she was referring to her class teacher. Who I have worked with for two years now).

 

"Her's baby..."

 (Continues the charades game in case I don't understand English.)

"It's COMING!"

Best charades ever.

Congratulations on your new baby Nurdan!  And welcome to the world Umut!

What the Heck Wednesdays: How to sit like a lady

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy... 

 I teach a lot of kids here at Bahçeşehir.  I teach 4 grade levels, 8 classes, and approximately 200 students.  Sometimes it makes me crazy to plan for so many different age groups, and keep track of so many different children, but I love all of them.  And I love love LOVE my four-year-olds.  I get to spend a few hours a week singing and dancing and playing English games with them, and they are just so sweet I want to squeeze their little faces (which, incidentally is culturally acceptable in Turkey). 


After watching them for a year, I have come to the conclusion that they aren't four at all.  I think they're three.  I think they count years differently here.  Either that, or American children are gigantic, and SUPER self sufficient compared to Turkish children.  So if these children sound a bit young to you, join the club. 

If you have children, or you spend any amount of time with young children, you may know that being polite, graceful, and proper are not high on their list of priorities.  Oh no. Priorities include having what they want the instant they want it (most likely the thing the kid next to them has, or anything that flashes and makes an obnoxious noise), and doing what they want whenever they want to (running, jumping, shouting, climbing anything taller than them, and throwing anything they can pick up). They aren't too interested in impressing anyone with their refined behavior.


So it never surprises me to see a little boy running around with no pants on, or a little girl in a tiny skirt sitting with her legs spread wide open. It doesn't bother them, so it doesn't bother me.  


But it bothers Talya. Talya is a four-year-old in my class.  One who has apparently been taught all about being proper and sitting "like a lady."  While we were all sitting on the carpet one day, I noticed Talya giving the stink eye to Eslem, while looking back at me as if to say "Will you look at her?"  So I did, and thought she was aiming her disgust at the fact that Eslem was laying down rather than sitting.  


"Eslem's laying down.  She must be tired."


This clearly didn't satisfy Talya who rolled her eyes and continued the stink face. I didn't realize that she was horrified by Eslem's un-lady-like stance of legs splayed, skirt up around her stomach, and underwear in full view, until Talya reached down to try and straighten Eslem's skirt.  


There wasn't much she could do with that little jean mini while Eslem's legs were spread so wide so her next attempt was to push Eslem's legs together at the knees.  Eslem didn't seem to mind, but the second Talya let go, those knees snapped wide open again.  


At this Talya leaned in real close and whispered "Çok ayıp!" in her ear.  (Want to know about Çok ayıp? Click here. )

Eslem brushed away Talya's whisper as if it was a fly, and kept right on sitting like that. 


After multiple more attempts at re-arranging Eslem's legs, Talya found a solution to the "slutty stance" that was bothering her so much. She leaned over Eslem, with one elbow on one side of her knees and her body on the other side, clamping Eslem's knees together, while managing to keep her own legs crossed "like a lady" the whole time.  


Kids.

What the Heck Wednesdays: Karaoke Day

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy...

Karaoke Day.  Also known as The Best Day Ever. Not that I like karaoke. I'd rather have my teeth drilled than sing in front of people.  But my students LOVE karaoke. And I love watching them sing.  Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Bruno Mars are SOOOO much more motivating than I am.

 I am nothing short of amazed when I see them read all of the words in their favourite songs.  Or when they choose their own song and prepare for days on end at home. Or when they bust out lyrics in a different context...  

Me: (Reading) Winnie smiled at Wilber...  Do you know what "smile" means?     
3rd grader: (singing)  Just stop for a minute and Smiiiiile! (points at dimples while smiling)
Thank you for Price Tag, Jessie J. My students love it.

Yesterday was our second All English Karaoke Day, and this time my students shocked me by adding well-thought-out performances to their singing.  Oh they crack me up.

Highlights:

• Altay solo singing Bruno Mars with the clearest most angelic voice ever. 
• Turgut solo singing one of my favourites: Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You."
• Alex, Yavuzhan, Efe, Oğuzhan, Umut, and Alaaddin playing air-guitar, air-piano, air-drums, air-fiddle, and air-saxiphone, during the instrumental parts of their songs. 
• İbrahim rocking out to a Jonas Brother's song, never looking at the lyrics, and never missing a word.
• Hazal donning a spangled, feathery, mardi gras mask for her performance.
• Doğa and Ceren singing Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," wearing matching outfits, dancing in perfect time with the music, and belting it out with the passion of the diva who actually sings it.  
• A few old school choices, like Derin singing "Que Sera Sera," and Kuzey and Ali Bayram singing John Denver's "Annie's Song."
• The tiniest girl in 2nd grade singing "I'm a Big Big Girl, In a Big Big World."
• Kazim shouting to the crowd "Stand up and dance!" and then throwing his hat out at the laughing parents. 
• Mehmet, Doruk and Can, who refused to use a song with printed lyrics because they didn't need it, cracking-up and losing their place in the song after Doruk busted out some ridiculous impromptu dance moves.
• Hilal makin' it rain faux money on the crowd during Alexandra Stan's "Million."
• The way their faces glowed with pride as their parents squeezed them after their performance. 
• The way they treated each other like real rock stars, hooting and high-fiving and giving standing ovations. 

My face hurt from smiling, my eyes burned from trying not to cry, and my heart hurt whenever I thought about saying "Goodbye."  I love these kids, and I will miss them dearly. 

What the Heck Wednesdays: I Say "Potato" You Say "How Dare You"

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy... 

We've both had a lot of experience saying common English words and phrases that accidentally offend everyone around us, because those same words in Turkish are some sort of vile swear word.  I won't translate all of them, because I don't want to offend you, but let me give you and idea of the kinds of things that we have to avoid saying...

I'm sick.
Book
Peach
Goat (The last three aren't actually bad themselves, but if you aren't careful about the way you pronounce them they can quickly turn into offensive words. Also, all three of these words are vocabulary words that we have to teach by the end of 2nd grade.)

I regularly ask children gripping their stomachs, "Are you sick?" To which I always get big eyes, blushing cheeks, and a quick head shake. Oops.  As an American, that is a difficult phrase to shake.

I've also discovered a few other words by trial and error.  Fun!
  
A common phrase used to discipline children here is "Çok Ayıp." It means "Shame on you."  So after hearing many of my second and third graders using this phrase on each other, I decided to be a good English teacher and teach them the English version.  When I taught it to them they all got really giggly, which I naively took to mean that they were all giddy about getting to learn English that isn't in their books. Idiot. They got really good at this phrase, and I beamed every time I heard them shouting "Shame on you, Cansu!" or "Shame, Shame Süleyman!" in the corridors.

Then one day something funny happened. In the middle of my lesson, one of the girls stood up and Shame, Shame-d one of the boys, who got really mad, and started yelling at her in Turkish.  Soon many children were chiming in about she had said something bad. She adamantly defended herself, pointing out that Miss Erin says it all the time. But her cheeks were turning the colour of someone who knows she's in trouble.

"Does shame mean something in Turkish?"  I guessed.

Rapid nodding and hidden faces.

"Does it mean something bad?"

More silent nodding.

"What does it mean?"

Horrified silence.  They all looked down at their tables and turned to statues.  No one wanted the job of telling me.

One girl finally said "Miss Erin.  Shame is very very ayıp."  Ironic.

"OooK." At this point I just thought quietly... I was curious, but clearly no one felt comfortable translating what I had been saying for weeks.

Finally another girl got up, pointed between her legs, and said "Boys have it."

Ahhhh...

After confirming with my colleagues, it was clear.  I had been teaching my children to say a slang version of "Penis on you," all year.

Shame on me.

What the Heck Wednesdays: I don't like socks

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy... 

I have this 2nd grade student, Burak.  He is nothing short of hilarious.  He pretty much NEVER speaks to me in English, unless he's getting nowhere with the very-important-life-altering bit of news he's trying to tell me in Turkish.  Sometimes I honestly don't understand.  Usually I'm just messing with him. Scratch that. Usually I'm being an awesome English teacher, and encouraging English communication from a child who needs a push.  Often, by the time he substitutes a few of the words for English, his news is coming out in a growl. 

Lately he has been obsessed with my feet. Particularly the fact that I'm never wearing socks.  

It's spring time people.  It's finally warm enough for me to wear skirts and dresses without tights underneath.  Also, sporty shoes are not allowed at this classy school, so I'm always either wearing heels or some sort of ballet flat.  Socks would not be cute with that outfit. 

Yet every morning Burak greets me with "Çorap varmı?" which means "Have you got socks?"  And every day I say "Nope, no socks." He usually asks two or three more times, believing that I don't understand, and finally substituting  çorap with socks: "Socks varmı?"  When he is satisfied that we have communicated accurately he announces to everyone within shrieking-ear-shot "Çorap yok!  Miss Erin Çorap YOOOOOOKKKK!" (yok=none).  

The other day after shouting at everyone else (none of whom seem to care) he came back to ask me something over and over again in Turkish.  This time I actually didn't understand, and sent him to another child to figure it out.   

Dila comes back to ask, "What does it mean if you haven't got any money?"  
Me: "Poor.  No money is poor."
Dila: "He wants to know if you're poor?"
Me: "Oh. No.  I'm not poor."
Burak: "Ama...  Çorap yok!"
Me:  "I just don't like socks." 
Burak dramatically smacks his face with his palm, as if that's the most ridiculous thing he has ever heard.  

My co workers are discussing starting a sock fund for me... 

What the Heck Wednesdays: The Hunger Games

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy...  

I am of the opinion that every teacher has an age group  that is their preferred age group, mine is pre-k and maybe early elementary school. It is absolutely not High School. As teachers in a school with students ranging between age 4 and age 17 we are often come in to contact with children older than we are used to teaching.

Sometimes when sitting in the office we are asked to watch students as they take tests or finish an assignment. That means I am asked to look for cheating or sneaky and suspicious behavior that may not be appropriate for test taking. This means I am forced to be seen as an "authority figure" for children in my least preferred student group, high school (cue scary moment music.)

One day 4 students were in our office taking a German test. I noticed that 2 of the boys were making eyes with each other in the way that boys who are cheating on a test might. I decided to have a little fun and jokingly let them know I saw what they were doing in hopes they woud give up. First attempt foiled...Score one for me.

These boys were obviously struggling with this test as they were in the office for almost 2 hours. They both spent most of that time asking their teacher about specific items on the test in hopes that she would give a small clue to the correct answer. Regardless they still seemed to think that cheating was their only option. This next attempt was a coordinated drop-off maneuver similar those you might see James Bond attempt to foil, when he isn't busy selling out with a bottle of Heineken.

Here's how it wen't down. One student wrote down some answers on a post-it sized paper. He then placed it in the designated location, probably said something like "Atatürk has left the building" and went over to his teacher to ask a question. The second student then retrieved the paper from the pick up point and slid it under the table in hopes that he wasn't caught.

Unfortunately for him, my supervisory abilities were strong that day and I watched the whole thing go down. Keeping with my jovial attitude from before I decided to have a little fun and let him off the hook easily. I leaned over his shoulder and asked if the paper had the right answers on it or if his friend was wrong. Stunned he said "No. Only paper." at which point he held up the back side of the paper. I shouldn't have worn my "I was born yesterday" shirt to work that day.

So I told him "Give it to me, I'll throw the paper away." He proceeded to make a big show of ripping it up into large enough pieces that he could still read the answers.

I reiterated, "I'll just throw it out, give it to me."

Like any good double-agent caught in the middle of a difficult situation, he swallowed the evidence. Thats right, he quickly tossed the papers into his mouth and chewed them up. He wasn't going down like that.

What the Heck?! Wednesdays: Dealing with Death

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" focus on the heart-warming, ridiculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  and our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy...  

I learned a long time ago that children deal with death differently than adults do.  While I may be crying over the loss of a cherished pet, my preschoolers want to check out the corpse and see if it smells.  When a catfish eats all of our baby frogs in one bite, and I prepare myself for mass hysteria, the child witnesses only ponder the catfish's enormous hunger, and if it might like some crackers. Perhaps for these young ones, death is simply a curious fact of life, not a heartbreaking loss.

Last week our coworker lost her grandfather. She rushed to Istanbul for the rest of the week to spend time mourning her family.  And we MISSED her!  I took this opportunity to teach some of the language we might use to express our condolences.  

We did some brainstorming in second grade, and the children were actually able to come up with all of this stuff themselves (with some minor editing on my part).  A lot of their ideas were phrases that they would use in Turkish, that they translated into English.  Using their minds.  (Man, they must have a great English teacher!) "We're waiting for you to come back," and "Come here please,"  are pretty direct translations.  

 

Can you feel the sweetness?

 

Pretty little butterfly...

And then there's this one...

Me:  Oh! Ali Kaya, very nice!  Who's this?  (yellow hair)

Ali Kaya: Miss Emel.

Me: And this?  Who is this? (hunchback charachter)

Ali Kaya:  Zombie Grandpa.

Me: (OMG don't laugh, don't laugh!)

 

I believe these are Grandpa's arms, digging their way out of the grave...

And this is Alien Grandpa.

 

Perhaps inappropriate, but also hilarious. 

What the Heck?! Wednesdays: Bıçak=Knife

I'm attempting a second series to go along with Turkish Meal Mondays.  I'm considering calling it "What the Heck?! Wednesdays."  I know it's Thursday. Too bad.

"What the Heck?! Wednesdays" will focus on the heart-warming, rediculous, and sometimes frustrating stories from our school days.  Teaching in Turkey is trying and difficult.  We come home exhausted,  our days off are nothing short of precious. That being said, we love our students.  Most of the time. They are creative, silly, smart, obnoxious, loud, affectionate and adorable.  And they make for some delightful stories. Enjoy... 

Scene:  Breakfast time in the Cafeteria
Cast:  Miss Erin and 2a (2nd grade monkeys)
Stars of the show: Aylin, Muhamet Emir, and Pelin

While eating a breakfast of olives, cheese, bread, and chocolate spread, I noticed Aylin looking around her plate for something to spread her chocolate with.  She eyed me for a few seconds and then turned to Pelin and Muhamet Emir.

Aylin is very bright, and enthusiastic.  Sometimes she forgets the English words that she already knows, but she always wants to say it to me in English.  Muhamet Emir is SUPER good at English. He never forgets ANYTHING.  Even though I have two students in my class who speak English fluently, children often turn to Muhamet Emir to translate something from them.  Pelin is a goof-ball. She is crazy sociable, and crazy funny, and crazy everything.  So that's the combination of minds working on figuring out the word "knife."

Heads pressed together. Whispers were exchanged.  Nods of agreement... Aylin emerges... and confidently announces "Miss Erin, I haven't got any trousers!"

Cue Pelin and Muhamet Emir falling off their chairs in a fit of shrieking giggles. 

Aylin whipped her head around in suspicion, and realized too late that trousers was not the word she was looking for. 

I have to hand it to them.  They got her good.