Staying true to the blog

I realize that the title of my blog is “Teaching in Toksook”, however I don’t really talk about my teaching that much. It’s not that I am embarrassed about my pursuit of becoming an effective teacher, it’s just that I find more creative energy after a hard days work, thinking about recreational pursuits instead.

Anyway, I thought I would tell a quick story about an experience that my class shared. We were playing a game, similar to Taboo, to reinforce vocabulary. One student stands at the front of class with a small stack of index cards, each one with a vocab word on it that only the student can see. The student can say anything they want, except the word on the card, in order to get another student in the class to guess the word on the index card. I kind of stand off to the side in case students need a little hint of a clue to give the class. Some of the words can be difficult for students to understand well enough to give decent clues. On this day, the student turned to the first index card. The word was “plural.” A giant smile grew on her face and I could tell that she knew what the word meant and was about to give an excellent clue. She opened her mouth and very confidently, yelled “Kittens!” There was a brief silence and then I immediately started to convulse with laughter. This was soon followed by the rest of class, as well as the student herself. I think that everyone realized that there were many words she could have chosen, but she picked something very cute, girly, and completely random. I still smile when I think of that moment and occasionally I remind her of that humble moment. She still laughs about it as well. I guess you had to be there.