I am teaching a class I am really excited about. I am rubbing my hands with glee about our first meeting, in which we will cover some of the topics I find the most interesting in a world filled with interesting things.
I am telling them about vocabulary maturation in children, which is driven in part by their recognition that the same word can mean very different things. Words can have both physical and non-physical meanings. Like sweet-- a candy can be sweet, or a girl can be sweet. I offer them another example. Remember the parable of the talents, where the servant says, "Master, I know you are a hard man"?
If we have never met, you will not know that my superpower is earnestness. I am emanating palpable waves of sincerity as I say, "In the same way, a floor can be hard or a man can be...[here I falter, realizing that I do not want to finish this particular sentence but feeling powerless to stop]...hard."
The room dissolves in laughter. It's one of those strange group moments, where something that might not seem especially funny on your screen is, in the moment, the funniest thing ever. One of my students says later, "I knew that I needed to stop laughing, and I just.couldn't.do.it."
I survey the wreckage of my class. As the laughter is dying down (it takes a while), I say, "Can we pretend this never happened?"
The answer, it appears, is no. Alas, I predict that my colleagues will be ribbing me about this for a while.
Oh dear, as far as awkwardly hilarious teaching moments go this is EPIC!!! Thanks for making me laugh this evening!
Posted by: L - Mama(e) in Translation | January 14, 2016 at 09:42 PM
That is a mature discussion!
Posted by: Andrea | January 15, 2016 at 05:49 AM
Ohhh... that is epic. Epic. I am giggling and empathetically cringing at the same time.
Posted by: Alexandra | January 17, 2016 at 01:37 PM
I laughed so hard that it hurt. Then I shared it with K and with my eldest son. Then I laughed more. Oh, Jamie, this is... epic is the right word.
Posted by: Tracy | January 20, 2016 at 09:32 AM