Teaching Anecdotes, Resurrected

I haven't written teaching anecdotes from class all year, mostly because I got a bit bored with teaching if we're being honest, but this week had a bunch of good ones that begged to be written about.

The Revolution comes to San Miguel
When my counterpart teacher and Antonio arrived at our 10th grade class room in San Miguelito, we found the door locked, with a sign on it saying "10A on Strike! No Spanish! No Physics! No English!" The students, hiding inside, had also moved the whiteboard to cover the window,with a message on it saying "Strike! Because You're Against Children's Recreation!" "They have a test today," Antonio told me. The principal broke up the "strike" pretty quickly, although it took the students a long time to remove their desks and backpacks from the windows. They were not pleased to have class to say the least. It was amusing that they grabbed the idea of student strikes out of the cultural ether and expropriated it to waste class time.

Verde, Amarillo y Rojo
To motivate our 7th grade class in El Tule since they've finished the curriculum for the year, my counterpart teacher Jonathan and I decided to teach a pop song. I suggested Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds" because the lyrics are simple, the message is positive, and it repeats a lot.  "Don't worry about a thing/cuz every little thing's/ gonna be alright." Plus, all the little necios love Bob Marley, and it was a good way to get them on board with class.
While we were in the middle of pre-teaching vocabulary during a downpour  (WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN WHEN WE FOCUS ON LISTENING????), Jonathan had a problem with a student, and asked her to go to the principal's office. It turned into a bit of an ugly altercation, but after she finally left, one of the students told him "Teacher, don't worry!"
It was cute. Then, it finally stopped raining enough to hear the song. As the students got into the song, tapping their fingers, and swaying from side to side a little bit, the mood in the class completely changed, the rain stopped and I swear the sun almost came out. Rasta magic.

Cake, o boy*, is that a gun?!?
In 9th grade in El Tule, we had a party to celebrate a student's birthday, and somehow, obviously because they don't know about my poor knife skills, the skills asked me to cut the cake with someone's pocketknife. I was well into my third or fourth piece when I realized that the knife handle was in the shape of a gun! Things that are not permitted at most US high schools: 1)pocketknives 2) guns or things that look like them. No such thing as zero tolerance out in the campo.

*Cake, o boy! is apparently what I said when I was 3 and saw that there was cake at a family party, and is now what you say anytime there's going to be cake in the Clayton household.