One more award!

I forgot an award!  Dreadfully sorry and I hope you can forgive me.  To give some background details about this final award, for the year 6 exam, I gave them the poem Oliphaunt which has lines such ‘grey as a mouse, big as a house, nose like a snake’ and ‘flapping, big ears.’  I asked the students to tell me what name we give this animal.  I didn’t get any Calvinist (as in Calvin and Hobbes, not the religious guy) responses like ‘Frank’ but I did get a simply amazing one.  So the Gerald Durrell Award for Animal Recognition goes to the Year 6 student who told me that the animal with flapping big ears was a shark.  Well done and remind me to get you a child’s encyclopaedia of animals for your birthday.

No award for this one but I would now like to post a speech that another of my class 6s wrote.  Every morning we have a Dzongkha speaker and an English speaker.  Since most kids just copy their speeches from wherever, I worked hard with my classes so they would write their own.  This one was just so sweet that I feel I have to post it and I feel I should point out that I had no idea about the topic until I saw the first draft.  Fortunately, I was ill the day it was delivered or I would have been quite embarrassed.  I have left the grammar and spelling exactly as the student had it in her first draft.

Early to bad and early early to rise makes man healthy and wise.  Repected principal, Bice principal toD teacher and my brothers and sisters  Today I am (No, I’m not leaving her name in, but I like the implication that she changes who she is day to day) from class VIB we like speak on the Topic favourite teacher here I begin.

We all the students have our own favourite teacher.  So I as a student also have my own favourite teacher.  My favourite teacher is miss Arwen.  She is from Australia.  she has white complaction.  She likes to sailing when she was in Australia.  her ship name is Jarmes crack.  She have snake and Little Dragon as her pet.  The Little Dragon she called as Teo's and snake as Eve (I made sure Padraig was included in her second draft and even wrote his name out phonetically.  Poor Padraig wouldn’t want to be forgotten!).  She is Live in samdinkha near the archery ground.  she loves to reed Books and listening song, and she love animals.  she gave us candy and small sticker as a gift when we hold Top mark in class text.(Yes, I’ve resorted to bribery)

Solastly I would like to say I Love my miss Arwen as well as other teacher too.

Awwwww!  I’m just so proud that all my lessons on grammar and spelling seem to have, well, not done anything.  But at least they know about sailing and reptiles! (And no ‘little swot’ comments, please!)

Another wonderful thing that happened was that I finally achieved one of the greatest teacher clichés!  I often get given things by my students.  I’ve been given sag (spinach), chillies, passionfruit, guavas and pomegranates but earlier this week…

 

It didn't even have any worms in it!

… someone gave me an apple for teacher!  I’ll reassure mom by saying that I washed and peeled it before eating.

I shall begin this next anecdote by saying that all is well and my feet are completely dry.  Last Wednesday, I was making some well-deserved popcorn when my doorbell rang.  I assumed it would be students either asking for homework help or selling cheese.  It was students but they weren’t selling anything or asking me to do their homework for them.  Instead they both started talking extremely fast and incoherently.  I asked them to slow down (they were both year 5 students so I don’t teach either) and managed to hear, ‘Flag coming from Lunana. Gautem Sir already gone.’  I guessed that some holy artefact was being brought to Samdinkha and one of the teachers, Gautem Sir, had gone to meet it.  I didn’t see what that had to do with me and wanted to return to my popcorn.  I wondered if all the teachers were meant to meet the visiting lama.  The students seemed concerned that I wasn’t reacting to what they had said so they started off talking quickly at the same time and kept saying that a flag was coming.  I told them to slow down and asked one of them to clearly say what was coming.  Again one of them said ‘flag’ but added ‘big river.’  Ah, a flood.  Well, at least I finally understood.  I then spent about 2 minutes running round and shoving important things into my backpack.  These included my passport, Jerry, meds and Druklet.  Just the bare essentials.  I put on my boots, grabbed a bottle of water and headed out. 

The river was an amazing colour.  Imagine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but sadly, I doubt it would have tasted very nice.  I hurried up the hill and stood with some of my students and their families watching the river and wondering what would happen.  How high was the river expected to rise?  Would we all head to the school and have a slumber party in the hall?  It was about then that I realised that I had forgotten my toothbrush.  After a little while, people started to return to Samdinkha and I decided that I’d risk it.  There is an alarm that is meant to go off if we’re really in danger and it hadn’t sounded so I thought I’d go back and pack my bag properly.  I made a pact with my neighbours that they’d tell me if they were heading out.  I’m pretty sure I could have squeezed into their car if it were an emergency.

Fortunately, the popcorn was fine so I enjoyed it while packing properly and letting my health buddy know that there was a potential situation.  I wasn’t panicking or even terribly worried but I have to admit, I slept in clothes that I wouldn’t mind climbing a hill in and didn’t sleep with my earplugs in.

In the morning, the river was back to its normal monsoon-grey and I found out that there had been a landslide which caused a little dam to form which eventually burst, raising the river and turning it Lindt 99% cocoa-brown.  I think some students were disappointed as they were hoping to get out of school.  I was ever-so-slightly relieved.  I do find it interesting, however, that if the apocalypse comes, it won’t be announced by horsemen but instead by two girls jabbering incoherently.

Hugs hugs!

And now the PJACEA Awards!

Good Morning, Afternoon, Evening or whatever time it is when you are reading this!  We have begun the second semester and all exams have finally been marked (almost a month ago but I’ve been a bit lazy about blog writing).  The students performed quite well, indeed some of them too well which meant there were not so many contestants for the

Penultimate Jibjokha Amusing and Confusing Exam Answer Awards!

This means I get to feel pride that some of my students seem to have learned something from my classes and yet still have a sore head from banging my head on my desk.  However, I did not suffer as many injuries as last year.

The first award to be given this year is Wol’s Award for Truly Creative Spelling.

This is a category in which many students excel as many believe that spelling rules and even phonetics are to be completely ignored.

First, the runner ups.

Well done to the year 6 student who told me about their ‘prantch.’  And well done to any of you who worked out that they meant ‘parents.’

Good try to the year 7 student who wrote to their ‘Rectaepted’ principal.  Slightly easier to work out that they meant ‘Respected.’

A round of applause to the year 6 student who told me about ‘Soseastudy.’  They were not referring to a branch of marine biology, instead, as you will hear when you say it out loud, they meant ‘Social Studies.’

But the winner of Wol’s Award has to go to another year 6 student for making ‘knowledge’ look and sound like a Tolkien villain by spelling the word as ‘norglath.’  (Help us, Aragorn!  Save us from the evil Norglath!)

We now move on to another favourite award of the judge, Inigo Montoya’s I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means Award.

There were three brave contestants for this award.  The first being a year 8 student who I hope is not as violent as their entry makes them sound. (For those of you who do not live in Bhutan, ‘Pema’ is a person’s name):

‘I shall mow the Pema.’  (You do and you clean it up yourself!)

The second was also a year 8 student who also managed a grammatically correct sentence (which was really all the exam question required) that still manage to draw a wonderful mental scene for the reader:

‘I shall be forgiving my pen.’ (You are a very bad pen for writing all those naughty words but I shall forgive you if you promise not to do it again!)

But the mental image made by winner’s sentence was just too good to not give them the award:

‘Tamas Edson was the invader of the lightbulb.’  (We can’t let it keep all that tungsten filament to itself! Company, attack!)

It is now time for a new award.  I call it the Um, Wait, What? Award for Excellence in Confusing the Judge.  There were so many contestants for this award that I could fill about 3 blogs with their entries but seriously, your brains would explode from confusion.  It was only thanks to my truly heroic intake of Nutella while marking that I am still with you today.

First, the runner ups (or is that runners up?)

For the terrifying mental image and confusing statement of:

‘Smoke can body make like butter’ the year 8 student gets an honourable mention.

Another honourable mention to the year 7 student who wrote the utterly confusing statement:

‘There will be wang from the lam.’  I really don’t know what that means and perhaps that’s for the best.

The final honourable mention goes to a year 8 student who told me:

‘It is not good for fighting and kick the bucket is not good.’  To be fair, I think she got confused by an idiom lesson I gave about a month before the exam. 

But the winner seems to have been going for a very profound philosophical statement which my inferior brain just could not comprehend:

‘In my mind I will energy the energy will finest.’  Did anyone else get a flashback to the ‘I can kill you with my brain’ line from Firefly?  Should I be frightened?

 Another new award is the Susan B Anthony You Go Girl Award which this year goes to a year 7 student who wrote a whole paragraph on how the moral of Metroid (I gave the synopsis of the Nintendo game as a passage in the exam) was how girls can do things better than boys and girls are stronger and smarter because they save the Solar System. (I wrote on her exam that perhaps ‘just as good’ was perhaps, maybe, more appropriate than ‘better.’ Was I wrong to do that?)

It is now time for the Roger of the Raj You’ve Got Their Position Slightly Wrong Award.

For the poetry section, I gave the year 7s the poem The Mewlips by Tolkien.  It is a perfectly lovely poem about a race of human-eating, gold-hoarding demon-like creatures which live in swamps.  You know, fun for the whole family.  Before going on with the award I would like to say that my father first recited the poem to me when we were at a muddy pond in the Margalla Hills.  Perfect timing as always, dad!

Honourable mentions go to the student who said the poem made them feel ‘happy’ and ‘interested to see the beautiful places’ and ‘interested to meet the Mewlips with their gold.’  Well, who am I to judge if they want to go and meet these creatures who like to keep bones in a sack. (I would also like to point out that I told the students that the poem was not true and they should not get scared of the creatures.  Sometimes I lie to keep the students from not being able to sleep.)

But there can only be one winner and that honour goes to the student who told me that ‘the Mewlips are friendly because they feed people.’  She thought it was very funny when I told her that ‘You go to find the Mewlips, and the Mewlips feed’ meant something slightly different.

We now come to the Ravenous Bug-Blatter Beast of Trall’s Award for Logic.  This award was won by two year 6 students for their answers to the question ‘Why would you not think the Oliphaunt was true?’  The year 6s also got a Tolkien poem but theirs was the slightly less scary Oliphaunt. 

One student told me:

‘I not think that the Oliphaunt is true you wont think I’m true.’

And the other:

‘I think that the Oliphaunt is true because Oliphaunts won’t think I am true.’

Sadly, I’ve tried the old ‘I won’t believe in you so you won’t believe in me’ trick on irritating humans and it works about as well as ‘if I can’t see you, you can’t see me.’

The last proper award is Sigmund’s Freudian Slip Award.  This student made a statement which I think is accidentally true of so many students around the world today.  However, well done to them for realising they were using an adverb.  They wrote:

‘I studying very hardly.’ 

Well, you and half the kids attending school today.  And, to be fair, at least a lot of my students have to walk an awfully long way to school and do farm work when they get home.  That’s a much better excuse for hardly studying than ‘I had to beat my high score in Bejewelled!’

Other funny statements I got that I just can’t think of categories for include:

‘My favourite book is all Dzongkha story book and all english story book.’

Perhaps the ‘Slight Exaggeration’ category?

‘[The emus] live in left side of Australian coat of arm’

I didn’t actually ask the student what she though a ‘coat of arm’ was though I might have got an interesting answer if I had.  I also couldn’t remember which side the emu stood on and so just guessed.

And finally:

‘Our farmers are depend on agriculture.’

Can I give that a ‘Pointing Out the Bleeding Obvious’ Award?

I shall end the Award Ceremony with two more amusing statements I saw during the holidays which prove that you do not need to be a student to get a mention for unintentionally funny statements.  The first, well, company name more than statement that made me smile was the ‘Ocean Views’ tour company.  They’ve either got amazing eyes or amazingly lost.

The second was a decal on the windshield of a taxi which told me to ‘Prise the Lord.’  Off what?

So just remember, don’t study and do your best to misunderstand and misremember everything and you too could get an award for

* All grammar and spelling errors in award winning sentences or phrases were copied from the students’ answers.  Please don’t ask me to correct them.  All grammar and spelling errors in the bits that I wrote you can only point out if you’re my dad because there’s no way I can stop him from doing so.  Hugs!