Well I am sitting in a class right now on Saturday morning (with my laptop) at UNLV. This is my life for the last 3 years. Fortunately, I earned my Masters of Education in Special Education from UNLV last December. And my awesome wife earned her Masters in Public Health, at the same time. Yah, we are proud of that!
We graduated the same day, and had our 2 girls go through the whole process with us. I am still taking classes for beefing up my license I will get by the Fall. Its ongoing and perpetual I guess being a teacher. You can always up your availability with endorsements and what not. So that’s what I am up to today.
I’m sitting in a class talking, and listening, rolling my eyes. Then slight variations of those things. The class I am currently in is a TESOL endorsement class. TESOL is an acronym for Teaching English Second something something Language. It’s a requirement that the state will require for all teachers in the next couple years to have. Las Vegas primarily and pretty much most classrooms in the Western United States will have the need for teachers to be qualified in accommodating students that are using English as a second language.
It’s a “red-tape hoop class” I call it. I’m not learning another language (because traditional white middle class people living in America are too lazy to learn another language – like me!), but I am supposedly getting qualified to help kids be up to speed with English based educational settings. So yes, it’s about as exciting as cleaning your oven.
However I am surrounded by a few other students today that have peaked my disappointment in not only the state of humanity, but my interest on telling a few entertaining stories about these guys.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my classes and what I am learning. But some of these students (who ironically are teaching others) really redefine the “mouth-breathing” factor.
There is one gal in particular (get it straight you ninnies right now that I am not sexist) in the front row that really let the 2 brain cells she harbors get into a burly fight.
So my professor led a simulated discussion between her (acting as an elementary teacher), and us (acting as 2nd grade students). This was a simulation according to facilitating getting English Language Learners (ELL) to verbalize new words and their ending sounds. Pretty easy right?
Here is the dialog (I wrote as fast as I could because this was so hilarious.)
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Ok class, I want you all to think of a word that has the same ending sound as the word “map”. “Map… (puh..puh…)”.
Students (Us, the graduate students):
“Trap, clap, tap, etc..”
Gal in the front say’s:
“Talk!.. (kuh..kuh..)”
She was serious my friends. The professor gave her this stare that was obviously disappointing. She looked at the gal in the front for an uncomfortable 4 seconds and says sarcastically: “PUH..PUH..”
This gal’s capacity of teaching is getting grade 9-12 students the content to get their GED. She teaches the students that are high school dropouts, and trying to get the basics done to get their GED’s. Oh, how scary is this world. Maybe NCLB (No child left behind) for teachers is not all that bad.
And guess what? She kept up this display.
Next simulation consisted of trying to explain to ELL’s how to use mnemonics in English class.
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Ok class, I want you all to think of a mnemonic for the word “fiction”. Fiction is not real, etc. So what would you say or sound out to help you remember what “fiction” means? How about using and sounding the word “FFFake”. “FFFake..FFFiction…FFFake…Fiction”. There’s your mnemonic. So class, what would you use?
Another Student:
“FFFalse…FFFiction…FFFalse…Fiction…”
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Very good, anyone else?
Gal in the front say’s:
“FFFictitious…that’s like Fiction…FFFictitious…”
AAAAUUUGGHHH!!! What is this gal doing in education!!!!
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
“Um, that’s the same word (name omitted), and it’s a synonym.”
Sometimes I tell my wife that if you could be allowed in life, to punch someone in the face as hard as you can just once (for being unbelievably stupid), I would use all those punches on this gal.
I’m going to keep my kids far from anyone who has any involvement with the hiring, mentoring, training, and placement of this ignoramus in a classroom with other human beings.
Sorry if I sound mean as snot, but come on everyone… why why why are some folks allowed to go through life with uninhibited lack of common sense. You can be stupid, and that’s ok. But talking and verbally demonstrating your stupidity is literally sinful in my world. I’m pretty stupid in some things I think. But I know when to hold it back and just figure “I’ll learn that later”.
I’ve told a lot of people this, and those who have gone through the process of a higher education program know one thing that’s pretty true.
That is, if you can sound intelligent and converse with accelerated vocabulary you have mastered most of what is required of university degrees. In addition to that to have the ability to write and convey those verbal skills to paper. Seriously, if your educated and have some significant experience in something, others will know that by the way you speak and write.
You can surmise a lot about someone by their BLURG’s too.
Are you using these words more than once in less than 3 paragraphs?:
Cute
Awesome
Whatever
Dude
Suck
Blog
Totally
OK
Then you better get a thesaurus or get into a book club. If you don’t you might wind up in this gal’s class learning how the letter’s k and p are the same.
Once again,
Thanks for reading this far if you have.
Brian…………………. (Start being heard everyone!!!)
We graduated the same day, and had our 2 girls go through the whole process with us. I am still taking classes for beefing up my license I will get by the Fall. Its ongoing and perpetual I guess being a teacher. You can always up your availability with endorsements and what not. So that’s what I am up to today.
I’m sitting in a class talking, and listening, rolling my eyes. Then slight variations of those things. The class I am currently in is a TESOL endorsement class. TESOL is an acronym for Teaching English Second something something Language. It’s a requirement that the state will require for all teachers in the next couple years to have. Las Vegas primarily and pretty much most classrooms in the Western United States will have the need for teachers to be qualified in accommodating students that are using English as a second language.
It’s a “red-tape hoop class” I call it. I’m not learning another language (because traditional white middle class people living in America are too lazy to learn another language – like me!), but I am supposedly getting qualified to help kids be up to speed with English based educational settings. So yes, it’s about as exciting as cleaning your oven.
However I am surrounded by a few other students today that have peaked my disappointment in not only the state of humanity, but my interest on telling a few entertaining stories about these guys.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my classes and what I am learning. But some of these students (who ironically are teaching others) really redefine the “mouth-breathing” factor.
There is one gal in particular (get it straight you ninnies right now that I am not sexist) in the front row that really let the 2 brain cells she harbors get into a burly fight.
So my professor led a simulated discussion between her (acting as an elementary teacher), and us (acting as 2nd grade students). This was a simulation according to facilitating getting English Language Learners (ELL) to verbalize new words and their ending sounds. Pretty easy right?
Here is the dialog (I wrote as fast as I could because this was so hilarious.)
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Ok class, I want you all to think of a word that has the same ending sound as the word “map”. “Map… (puh..puh…)”.
Students (Us, the graduate students):
“Trap, clap, tap, etc..”
Gal in the front say’s:
“Talk!.. (kuh..kuh..)”
She was serious my friends. The professor gave her this stare that was obviously disappointing. She looked at the gal in the front for an uncomfortable 4 seconds and says sarcastically: “PUH..PUH..”
This gal’s capacity of teaching is getting grade 9-12 students the content to get their GED. She teaches the students that are high school dropouts, and trying to get the basics done to get their GED’s. Oh, how scary is this world. Maybe NCLB (No child left behind) for teachers is not all that bad.
And guess what? She kept up this display.
Next simulation consisted of trying to explain to ELL’s how to use mnemonics in English class.
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Ok class, I want you all to think of a mnemonic for the word “fiction”. Fiction is not real, etc. So what would you say or sound out to help you remember what “fiction” means? How about using and sounding the word “FFFake”. “FFFake..FFFiction…FFFake…Fiction”. There’s your mnemonic. So class, what would you use?
Another Student:
“FFFalse…FFFiction…FFFalse…Fiction…”
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
Very good, anyone else?
Gal in the front say’s:
“FFFictitious…that’s like Fiction…FFFictitious…”
AAAAUUUGGHHH!!! What is this gal doing in education!!!!
Elementary Teacher (my professor):
“Um, that’s the same word (name omitted), and it’s a synonym.”
Sometimes I tell my wife that if you could be allowed in life, to punch someone in the face as hard as you can just once (for being unbelievably stupid), I would use all those punches on this gal.
I’m going to keep my kids far from anyone who has any involvement with the hiring, mentoring, training, and placement of this ignoramus in a classroom with other human beings.
Sorry if I sound mean as snot, but come on everyone… why why why are some folks allowed to go through life with uninhibited lack of common sense. You can be stupid, and that’s ok. But talking and verbally demonstrating your stupidity is literally sinful in my world. I’m pretty stupid in some things I think. But I know when to hold it back and just figure “I’ll learn that later”.
I’ve told a lot of people this, and those who have gone through the process of a higher education program know one thing that’s pretty true.
That is, if you can sound intelligent and converse with accelerated vocabulary you have mastered most of what is required of university degrees. In addition to that to have the ability to write and convey those verbal skills to paper. Seriously, if your educated and have some significant experience in something, others will know that by the way you speak and write.
You can surmise a lot about someone by their BLURG’s too.
Are you using these words more than once in less than 3 paragraphs?:
Cute
Awesome
Whatever
Dude
Suck
Blog
Totally
OK
Then you better get a thesaurus or get into a book club. If you don’t you might wind up in this gal’s class learning how the letter’s k and p are the same.
Once again,
Thanks for reading this far if you have.
Brian…………………. (Start being heard everyone!!!)
1 comment:
Rachel told me this story today, and I can hardly believe it. I hope she felt like an idiot!
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