This week's stories from school

Through the hard work as a teacher one experiences interesting and funny things through a week. There are three episodes in particular that I remember this week.

I

The whole class is working quietly with exercises except from two boys. They are sitting behind each other just in front of me. The front boy is turned towards the other, his back turned towards me. I rise and walks towards them. They are concentrating on something and does not notice until I ask if they can turn from each other.  "I am just checking his breath," the front boy says. "He is going to see his girl friend in the break." He did not tell this to be funny. This was a matter of deep seriousness - as it of course is if you are fourteen year old.

II

Correcting English essays is of course interesting. Today I have read that Abraham Lincoln go the Nobel Peace Prize and that a robber pulled a gun from his dress ('suit' is dress in Norwegian). However, what fascinated most was an essay with many spelling mistakes. The same mistakes in common, simple words kept repeating themselves. After a while I though it was something familiar in this way of writing and suddenly found out it was from Ali G.

III

Pupils with dyslexia are allowed to use computers for their essay writing. I was supervising a literature exam earlier this week and before the exam started I overheard this conversation amongst the two laptop boys on the front row just after they had discussed how they were doing in some computer game I had not heard of:

- Do you like blogs?
- I don't know.
- You know what it is don't you? (Waiting for an answer, but the other boy is looking down at his keyboard.) It is these boring written stuff on the net. I am never going to read them. They are sooo boring. I can't believe anyone is interested in them.

Well, I suppose I did not really expect thirteen year old boys to be amongst my readers anyway. However, I did smile when I heard this. The boy who knew "everything" about blogs obviously had not really been much in the blogosphere and I am quite sure that if he found a blogger with passion for his favourite game he might get hooked as a reader as well. It was the certainty in his speech that fascinated me. He obvious wanted to tell his friend something he had just discovered and he found criticism to be the best way of showing superiority.

Just like in the intellectual world...

Comments

[Eva Adolfsson]

Lovely stories. Especially the one about the breath :) They ARE cute sometimes!