Next we'll work on the cabbage patch

I was teaching an ESL group today (that's English as a Second Language for the acronym impaired readers among us) when it came to my attention that out of the three boys in the group exactly zero percent of them knew what break dancing was. Of course I found that entirely unacceptable.

You may be asking yourself why we were talking about break dancing in class, but never you mind, I do not have the time to go into the complicated intricacies of the art of teaching here today.

Ahem.

Anyway, after I got over my appalledness at their woefully lacking education I tried to explain break dancing to my little Spanish speaking friends. Have you ever tried to explain breaking dancing to someone? It's really not as easy as it sounds. Eventually I had to get up and actually demonstrate some classic break dancing moves to them.

Have you ever tried to demonstrate break dancing? That's not as easy as it sounds either.

Let's just say it didn't go well. I fear they did not understand what walking like a retarded astronaut had to do with American dancing, though it was hard to tell by all the blank stares and blinking they directed my way. Apparently they don't appreciate the finer points of classic dance moves.

Right.

They struggled a bit with synonyms and antonyms as well at first. I didn't think they would ever understand the difference of the two. We had tried numerous examples of synonyms when I got to the word hot. Right before all my hair fell out in one frustrated pile their teacher came in to pick them up early. I told them to leave their dry erase boards on the table and I'd put their things away so their teacher didn't have to wait.

I picked up the first dry erase board. It said warm. Very good. I erased it and put it away.

I picked up the second board. It said worm (don't laugh. That actually makes sense. Seriously, sound it out. Phonetically it does say warm). Again, very good. They both understood that warm and hot were alike. Yay!

I picked up the third board. It said Mrs. S (insert my last name). Now this kid, he is obviously BRILLIANT. He totally understood synonyms. I immediately game him an A for the entire school year and referred him to the Gifted and Talented program. What else could I do??

Oh I kid. What kind of teacher do you think I am?

I only gave him an A for the semester.

Unfortunately my lovely teacher buzz was killed when my next group of children refused to believe that toodleooski was Russian for good-bye. What on earth happened to my credibility??

Perhaps they heard about the break dancing.