AMY: Anitdisestablishmentarianism Meaty Yemen

Having finished exams this past weekend for Sunday classes, this was Parents' Weekend for the Sunday Schedule. Without any real lesson to drill forcefully into their little heads, I had a full hour and a half to fill before meeting the 'rents. On a whim, I assigned what I deemed a simple task to my class of mostly 7 year olds.


Remember those poems you wrote in elementary school, where you write the letters of your name vertically down the paper, and choose a word beginning with each letter that describes yourself, your interests, or your aspirations for the future? I explained this concept of the acronym poem to my students, also having my Chinese teacher explain it in Chinese, and, in addition, making an example of my own name (not the one in the title of this post, unfortunatley), following this by an English and Chinese explanation. I thought the concept easy enough to understand, and, coupled with the drawn out explanation, practically too much so. My students, however, did not share this sentiment; the resulting poems were quite funny. For example:


Run
Angry
Is
Noodles
Yes


My CT (Chinese Teacher) and I laughed at the poems, not to mention the fact that the children thought they had done such a wonderful job on them. Having enjoyed this so much, I tried it againfor my class of mostly 10-year-olds. The results, after additional clarification of the purpose of the poem, were even more hilarious.


Easy
Make machine
Mother
Are you a good girl?


That afternoon, I decided that this activity could not be abandoned. After all, given past evidence, the older the students, coupled with the increasing clarity of the instructions, yielded more bizarre poetic material. And that afternoon, my 13 year olds did not disappoint.


The cat is sheep
Ox is very strong
Mom likes watching T.V.


Knife and Fork
Always happy
Read a newspaper
Eat a cake
Never have one eye.

This coming Saturday is Parent's Weekend again, as well as my last full day of work here at Aston 2 in Jinan. You bet I will have more of these poems to post!