Out of the Mouths of Babes 7

Every once in awhile, I like to share some of my happiest moments as a teacher, the times when I'm interacting in some way with my students. In an earlier piece I discussed the use of journaling in an ESL class. Aside from being a useful tool for teaching English to speakers of other languages, the practice can be amusing for the teacher. Towards the end of the year, my class puts together a magazine, a portfolio of sorts, and we always start by revisiting ideas taken from the journals they'd been writing in all year. Going through them, I was reminded by how entertaining some of their answers can be, and I thought I'd share some of them here.

Throughout the school year, I pose questions to my students for them to answer in their journal. Sometimes the questions are related to something we've been working on in class, while others are just posed to get their thought processes juices flowing (in English). As they say, kids say the darndest things...and my students are no exception...

Here are some of my queries and some of their witty and comical responses:

Name three rules in school that you don't agree with. Why do you think they're wrong?

Question: Three rules in school that I don't agree with are:

- That we can't chew gum in school. I think it's wrong, because people's breath smells bad.

- That we're not allowed to drink anything except water because we get thirsty and we need sugar so we can stay powerful.

- We're not allowed to wear hats and ii don't agree with that because my ears get cold and I think that's wrong!

Question: Talk about something you know how to do.

One thing that I know how to make is a bathroom, I learned this one month ago. The first thing is you have to find a room. Then put the bathtub and the pipes and then where you wash your hands. After that put a special sheetrock that's made of concrete and then take a measurement from wall to wall. Next cut it with a special machine and put all the sheetrock up. Then put glue around the bathtub and cut all the pieces. Next you paint and you have a bathroom.

Question: Do you consider yourself a lazy person? If so, why?

Yes, I do consider myself lazy because sometimes I have something to do and I don't do it. I just play around and don't pay any attention to it. All I usually want to do is just play games on my computer. It's good to be lazy because you never get tired and you don't use your mind too much. I am a lazy boy, but when I want I can be a good student.