Aubergine and Green Pepper are both on vacation, so I'm covering one of each of their classes. This is my third, and last, week with Green Pepper's group. I was kind of worried about taking over for him--he's had this class for about 3 years, and they love him. I sat in on half a lesson before he left, and it was pretty much him having a slow, drawn-out conversation with the 3 or 4 (out of 6) students who were paying attention at any given time. (He got about 15 minutes out of a drawing on the whiteboard of an oblong-shape with a smiley face on a sofa, trying to get the class to guess "couch potato.") They adore him, though, and have really warmed to the old-British-man-and-his-foibles thing.

I can't give a personality-driven lessons where I go into the classroom and assume that the students are interested in [holy shit i just saw a shooting star from my balcony] whatever I feel like ruminating about. That works for people like Green Pepper (and, most astoundingly, Onion), who have constant faith in their ability to entertain any group of people you give them, but I need more material. I feel guilty unless I'm trying to teach them something. I try to keep things fun, and I'll go along with interesting tangents, but I get uncomfortable unless the lesson has a certain pace (I know I go too fast...Aubergine observed me and told me to let the students think more. He also told me I'm a "real" teacher, not a professional foreigner).

Today with Green Pepper's class (they're FCE, an exam-preparation course, but nobody's really planning on taking it...it's just an excuse to hang out with GP) I brought in my laptop with a podcast of NPR's story of the day from Sunday. It was about the Cringe Readings, an event at a Brooklyn bar where people stand up and share their awful teenage journal-entries and poetry. (It's here if you feel like listening to it...7 min long http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11989043 ) I started off by writing some questions on the board (Do you keep a diary? Did you keep a diary when you were younger? If not, do you wish you had? If so, are you embarassed about what you wrote? What does the verb "cringe" mean? Where is Brooklyn?) and having them talk in pairs. I listened in on the conversations to correct mistakes, provide vocabulary, chat. Then I told them a little about NPR (after a little thought they guessed what it stood for), and introduced them to the idea of the Cringe Readings. I handed out a sheet with tricky phrases and vocab (the whole nine yards, geek, soak up the shame, shudder of recognition), and we listened to the program. I had them summarize the gist of the program, and what different people shared at the event, and we went through the list of phrases. Then we listened to it again, and they talked in pairs about Why do people go to the Cringe Readings? Would you go? Would you share anything? What?

I know I aimed it a little high, and some of them were frustrated by the quick American accents and volume of new phrases, but they thought the topic was interesting and got a kick out of hearing something real. It was interesting for me that no one in Green Pepper's class (or my own class that did this yesterday), said they'd share something at a similar event. People said they'd tell these stories to their close friends, or a psychologist, but never to a room full of strangers. It's private, they felt, and they wouldn't want people to think ill of them. I think you'd find a lot more Americans willing to share things. Maybe we're more into group therapy, maybe we want to prove we're cooler than our former selves, maybe we just think self-deprecation is funnier.

I might do an NPR review of the Harry Potter movie next. It's especially tempting because the reviewer describes the Ministry of Magic newspaper as "Pravda-like."