Unterrichten

Today, I took a few kids out of one of my classes to another room and we worked on saying the date.  Things like reading "12th January" as "the twelfth of January" are particularly difficult.  I think it's because we're using the British system.  "January 12th" equals "January twelfth".  Much easier.  But anyway.

I had one kid making up dates, and the other two up at the board, trying to correctly write it before each other.  The board folds in two places, making it very convenient for this sort of game, because the ones writing can't see what the other one is doing.

There was, as usual, some creative spelling and some German spelling and some misbehavior, but it went over pretty well.  Then one of the boys, Bjarne, started humming the Imperial March and drawing Darth Vader on the board.

Now, I wasn't too bothered that he was disrupting the lesson, because that's kind of just what he does, and I'm used to it.  No, what bugged me was that his Darth Vader drawing was terrible.  This kid was probably born in 2000, so I guess I can't expect him to really understand.  Not that I can even really understand, but I at least managed to see the trilogy in theaters.

Anyway, as a responsible teacher, I couldn't take time from the lesson to educate him and Jascha, who also tried to draw the Sith Lord, about the fact that yes, Vader's helmet does have a nose; no, that's not actually how perspective works; no, Darth Vader does not have three pink lightning bolts in the middle of his forehead, though I appreciate that as an interpretation of the transformative power of force lightning. 

Teaching about Star Wars is just as important as learning to say the date.  It's hard to earn my respect unless you can have a conversation about Star Wars, so I think this is an important cultural ambassador moment.  There's a lot of background vocab to learn though.