Conversations with My Students: Hitler and Other Things

It's been a while since I've had one of these posted, eh? Early in the term, I concluded that my kids this year are TOTALLY lame. Last year I had at least one class a day I could look forward to, and now I'm lucky if I manage to crack a genuine smile in class.

One of the few classes I like this term is my Saturday afternoon class with two middle school girls. They became friends very quickly and I can usually understand the things they blabber about in Japanese. I should be harder on them when it comes to speaking English, but they're my second to the last class every week and I'm running on fumes by then.

For whatever reason, we were talking about famous old white people in the textbook. There was one very interesting person in there we had to cover:

Less offensive than the real thing!

Me: OK, who was Adolf Hitler?
Girls: *Blank stares*

Me: OMG really? World War 2? He killed all the Jews? WHAT DO THEY TEACH YOU IN SCHOOL THESE DAYS???
Uhn: (so nicknamed for her favorite one-word response) AH I know! I know! He was very bad man!
Me: Yes, I suppose that is the absolute nicest way to put it.

Uhn: *explaining in Japanese to classmate* He killed all the Jewish people. They believe in God or something. Wasn't he French?
Me: NO HE WAS NOT FRENCH.

Another sometimes funny class is a group of elementary schoolers. We were playing Hangman and they had to spell "diaper." Each person gets a turn to guess a letter and the letters up on the board were I, A, and E.

Crayon Shinchan: (only because he looks like Shinosuke) *looking confused and uncertain*

Bad Comedian: (he thinks he's funny) T. T!!!

Shinchan: T? *looks at BC*

BC: Yes! T!

Shinchan: T? *looks at classmates* T?

Everyone else: *giving knowing smiles and giggles*

Shinchan: T!

Me: WRONG.

Everyone else and BC: BWAHAHAHAHAHA.

A week and a half left at the job! I can't say I'll miss more than a handful of them, in part because manager gave away all my favorites this term because she is an awful person. Yay!