A Bizzare Lesson

While things have generally been going smoothly, I knew I’d eventually have an off day, not to mention a bad lesson. Little did I know that it would hit me so soon, or quite so awkwardly. To preface the story: my apartment building is on the side of a small mountain and is therefore completely exposed to the elements. It’s great when it’s sunny, but when it rains, it sounds like you’re standing underneath the Niagara Falls. What’s worse is when there’s a strong wind, you get the feeling the building is seconds away from levitating and being swept away to the Land of Oz by a category five hurricane. You get the idea. So Thursday night there were winds of about 60 km/h pounding against my bedroom window with an incredible force. As a result, I didn’t sleep. Inconveniently, I had six hours of class awaiting me the next day! I can handle being half awake while attending class, because face it, everyone goes through those days in college. However, teaching under these circumstances is a whole other story. I realized it actually takes a good amount of energy to be enthusiastic and animated for a whole hour to keep the kids engaged and to lead them into productive discussion. When you’re out of it though, it’s like you trying to pull your own teeth.

Class was pretty much normal until the last hour. It was the last class of the day on Friday, so naturally the kids had somewhat of a shorter attention span and were ready to be done for the week. Anyways, their teacher had asked me to discuss the film poster from “Fast Food Nation.” The poster is already kind of strange to begin with, but some of the questions were worse:

“What are the hamburgers supposed to resemble?”
“Why is there an American flag on the baby’s diaper?”
“Why is the baby reaching up to the hamburgers?”
“What makes this poster provocative?”

I suppose they’re relatively harmless on the surface, but when dealing with teenagers, maybe not ideal. Upon asking them to respond to the first question, I was faced with silence. I figured this would happen, because not only were they supposed to talk about boobs, but they were supposed to do this in a foreign language with an assistant they hardly knew. After a continued struggle for answers, it was my turn to explain:

“Well, the hamburgers are supposed to resemble a woman’s breasts. The baby is reaching up to the breasts because it’s probably hungry, and of course it’s too young to eat hamburgers, but if the mother consumes them, then the hormones from the meat are likely to be in her breast milk, so therefore the baby would be indirectly eating the hamburger meat, and the poster is trying to explain that … blah blah blah.”

After all that there was a brief lull. Then one of the students calls out, “BOOBS!”

I could see the light bulb go on when he realized that this was in fact what we were talking about. Sadly, I think the majority of the class missed the point of my explanation. It wasn’t until one of the better students translated what I said that they got it, and oh how funny they thought it was! Clearly they hadn’t quite reached the level of maturity to seriously talk about things like “breast milk.” Mind you these questions came from their book! It quickly dawned on me why the teacher might have preferred to leave this lesson to me. Ah the joys of being an assistant. Since this obviously wasn’t going anywhere, I decided to drop it and move on to another question, which brought us to the next, extremely academic topic of poop.

When discussing babies and diapers, it’s not a big surprise. Unfortunately though, the students didn’t express themselves in the most eloquent of ways: “The baby shit on America!” I asked for a better word, upon which I was given “poop.” After lecturing that “shit” and “poop” are not words we use in polite conversation, let alone class, they wanted to know the alternative. While not being an expert in this field of terminology myself, I initially hesitated, but decided on “relieving oneself” as the proper expression. And what do you say instead of “shit?” At this point, I found myself writing “feces” on the board. While writing this in my half-asleep, over-caffeinated state, I realized how ridiculous it all was. Too late, there it was, written on the board in big letters. Then I went on to explain that in this movie, a man discovered fecal matter in his hamburger meat, etc. This evoked both laughter and disgust, as I’m sure it’s not every day they talk about these things in class. French scchools are generally very ridig! It’s a good thing the principal didn’t decide to drop by and observe that day. Luckily I was spared from having to go into any further detail, as class was about to end. Truly saved by the bell! Well, that concluded the lecture on…what was it we were talking about again? Fast Food? Oh how easily things can go astray.

In the end I was left to wonder: Is this really what the teacher had envisioned for class? Is this really what the French government is paying me to do? Oh yes. But before I could give it any further thought, I was back in bed on the verge of much needed sleep, glad to have made it through the day, and feeling like I’d been dreaming all along. In the end, it’s something to laugh about. For what it’s worth, it got them talking. Lets just hope there’s no more stormy Thursdays...