Italian Class

Blas is really loud. He likes to yell in class. It's a kind of funny thing. I wonder what would happen if I started yelling like he does when I return to my classroom in San Francisco. He doesn't yell at us, but he yells. I wish I could record it because it is hard to describe - imagine the sterotypical Italian saying, "hey, what's a matta for you?" with gestures and everything. That is Blas, except that he is Argentine.

Well, today we had pretty much the same class as we've been having, but the students are beginning to relate a little more to each other. He still calls me Reeshard and he still calls on me in ways that embarrass me. Matias still makes funny jokes that make Blas laugh. I guess this is the way things are going to go from now on. The only difference being that some of the quieter girls are beginning to speak up more. It's nice because they are the ones who seem to be serious about speaking Italian and when they speak, they speak in Italian. I guess some learning is taking place.

Today we discussed the third of Aesop's fables that we read. I tried reading it and had a hard time understanding what it was about because I didn't understand one of the key words - volpe, and I wasn't in a mood to guess. Turns out a volpe is a fox. I entered the entire fable into an online translator and volpe was translated as vixen. That didn't help me. But the translation did help me to understand the rest of the story, more or less.

I ran into Matias in the bar at school and asked him what a volpe was. He told me it was a fox. I still didn't recognize the fable though - it was about a fox that didn't know what lions were.

Matias is a nice guy, and he's very funny in class. Blas kids him and says that he "faccia tosta" - I am not sure what this means, but I think it means bullshit.

Anyway, I sat and spoke to Matias before class with my coffee (and donut today). He works in a hotel in Palermo and was just coming from work straight to school. He said he has to speak English at work but also there are Italians and French so that is why he is studying Italian.

After we finished discussing Aesop, Blas told us to work in groups and write the names of three famous people on three separate pieces of paper. We were then to give the paper to another group. They would hold it up and they were to ask questions, or we were to give them clues and they had to guess who the person was (they were not to look at the paper).

This is a pretty classic ESL activity that I've used in one form or another (there are several variations).

The interesting thing about this was that it had nothing to do with anything we were doing in class. It was not related to the fable, nor was it related to the last chapter we just finished which was about food and ordering in a restaurant, or the upcoming chapter which is about hotels and travel. So we were supposed to ask questions or give clues about the person's occupation, nationality, appearance, etc., but we didn't have the vocabulary to do it.

It reminded me of when I first went to Japan and I had just learned about communicative language teaching. I understood it to mean that you put people in situations where they have to communicate and they magically begin to speak English. What I didn't get at the time was that they needed the language to do this. If we had been given some language first, this would have been a great way to practice it. Instead, we were very limited in the vocabulary we could use. Mostly we narrowed it down by determining if the person was male or female, boy or girl, alive or dead, Argentine or not and a singer or politician. Most of the people were Argentine and I had no idea who they were.

It was interesting for me to experience this activity that I am familiar with from the perspective of a student.

During our break the girls in my group started asking me personal questions. Natalia wanted to know if I had a wife in the US. They were kind of getting excited about this and firing questions at me that I didn't fully understand and didn't really want to answer. The problem in this class and my arabic class as well is that the acoustics in the room are very bad. There is a horrible echo. When everyone is speaking, and in this case, when Blas is yelling and everyone is speaking, I have a really hard time hearing. I knew they were asking about my wife, but it was too overwhelming for me and fortuntely, Blas called us back to start class.

He then made a comment that I was in a group with three women (who are all young and kind of hot). Ugh.

I remember at Mission Campus where I used to teach, there was a teacher who told us about this guy in her class, Jose. She was so upset because she told us that Jose told her that he was married and his wife and two children were killed in a car accident. This teacher, Olivia, told us what a good soul Jose was.

Another colleague, Suzanne, who has very good gaydar, told me she thought Jose was gay. I had Jose in my class the next semester, and I couldn't see it, but Suzanne insisted.

Then there was this guy named Oscar, who I knew was gay because I caught him several times outside of my classroom peering in and watching me teach and making eyes at me (my gaydar works if I am hit over the head). Suzanne told me that Oscar told her that he had been married and his wife and kids were killed in a car accident.

It was then that we put together the pieces and realized that these guys were telling people this story to get them to stop asking questions about their personal lives. Of course if it were ok just to say "I'm gay" and leave it at that, they probably would have. But in this case, rather than pretend to be straight, what a better way to get people to stop asking questions than to lie about a family tragedy.

Hmmm....it's tempting, but I don't know if I can pull it off.