americantakeout
tasty bytes from China
Categories:

Archives:
Meta:
August 2013
M T W T F S S
« Jul   Sep »
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
08/16/13
Hieroglyphics
Filed under: Kids, Culture
Posted by: @ 8:53 am


So, I thought it would be fun to share relics from a time long past with my ESL students. I’m not talking treasures excavated from King Tut’s tomb or the Mayan Ruins of Tulum but from a place equally as mysterious: my storage locker in Chicago. Over the summer, I uncovered a folder of homework I kept from Watervliet High School.
I know. I also have a trunk full of diaries, dating back to the early seventies.
Since my school folder weighed less than a loaf of Velveeta, I thought why bring it to the flipside? It could be fun in class.
The blue Mead folder was covered with doodles etched in Mr. Hanson’s class, the inside flaps filled with antiquated BG writings (before Google). The literary loot included a ditto copy of Mrs. Spivey’s class’s poetry collection (which amazingly still had the essence of the purple ink) and stories from Mrs. Brigham’s class, penned with a Bic. The loose leaf collection included a tale about a Guru named Sue, an elephant with a gambling problem and a pestering fly buzzing around Mr. Feric’s class.
To me, the writings were priceless. But to my students?
Worthless.
I kicked off class by telling my students I had a surprise from the States.
“Did you bring us Jolly Ranchers?” Sun Min asked.
“No.”
“Supersized Tootsie Rolls or Nerds?”Jingran was hoping.
“No.”
“Bubble Wum?”
“Gum’s not allowed in class,” I reminded them.
“Well, what is it, Mrs. Mac?”
I revealed the folder from behind my desk.“I brought my writing folder from when I was your age.”
My class’s response was less than enthusiastic. After giving me the Asian version of the stink eye, my students rampaged through the folder’s contents. One student pulled out a one-thousand-fifty-six word essay I pecked out on a manual typewriter.
“Cool!”
“So you find my words interesting?”
“No, we never seen something written on one of those typing machines.” Jingran added. His  curious fingers rubbed the erasable paper.
“It feel so strange,” Zhou Ling commented.
“It’s what we called onion skin.”
“Mrs. Mac’s so old, they wrote on onions!”
YuYa and Young Il  got a kick out of doodles on the folder but completely ignored my handwritten stories.
“Students,” I started, “don’t you want to read the assignments I wrote when I was your age?”
They just stared at each other. “We can’t.”
“We don’t know how to read your hand writing.”
I guess cursive is going to the wayside with caveman drawings.
Next time, I’ll bring the process cheese.

comments (0)