I spent the morning at the doctor and had to miss teaching my first German I class. Confidant that I would return in time for German 2, I chatted up a storm with the doc, and waited patiently in line at the lab. I called school and said I'd be 10 minutes late and my school responded with standard operating procedure number 1: They put a note on the board informing the students to wait quietly for me. (my school is a bit casual about some things.)
"The natives" were waiting when I walked in the room. They were waiting patiently. 90% of them had books in hand and they genuinely appeared to be engaged. No sound of quickly hushed conversations preceded my entrance. They weren't talking. The were reading. All of them.
"I'm so sorry I'm late you guys!" I said as I rushed in. I have excellent students, but still the sight of them all studying with NO adult supervision surprised me. I had to find out if this was real so I innocently asked for more details.
"You guys are seriously all being so good? Really?"
They nodded.
"Wow! guys I'm seriously impressed!" I said. "I mean I'm seriously so proud of you guys! You are amazing!" They all looked so guiltless only Steffen* was smiling slightly in anticipation.
"I can't believe you all just waited for me to come in." My bags were getting heavy in my arm by this point so I turned to set them down.
That is when I saw Uwe. I gasped. He was sprawled out on the floor between the grand piano and my desk. His hands and legs were duct taped together and his mouth was completely hidden by another silver strip. He wasn't moving at all.
I would have screamed.
I would have fainted.
I would shouted at the class.
Except this was not the first Uwe duct tape incident.
I was startled but not surprised.
Not at all.
You might want to pause and read some of the previous German Class duct tape incidents.
Duct tape incident #1
Duct tape incident #2
This qualifies as Duct tape incident #3
I burst out laughing. I made a big show of going to Uwe and making sure he was all right and lecturing the class about not taking jokes too far. I mean what if Uwe had suddenly started to choke? Did you guys think about that?????
More memorable quotes from the day:
Felix: "Removing the duct tape from you mouth is the worst part...I should know it was originally me on the floor waiting for you to come in but then my leg fell asleep so I let Uwe take over."
Me: "Were you guys watching out the window to see me drive up?."
Uwe: "Oh no we thought you were in the building some where. I had to wait a long time on the floor."
Me: "Klaus you let this happen?!?"
Klaus: "Oh yeah I roughed him up a bit first."
Me: "You guys are seriously so funny."
Moritz: "We really weren’t sure how you were going to take it."
Me: "I have the best students in the world"
Despite the initial disturbance we had a great class. We took a quiz, leaned new words and talked about the German school system. Now I've just got to think of some way to get them back since the "revenge" plan I used last year won't work again.
*all names have been changed to protect the guilty
3 comments:
Sometimes I wonder about your students. I wonder what they would think of Red Green?
Your students have a weird sense of humor. And you picked funny German names such as Uwe and Klaus ;) How about Lothar? ;)
that is an awesome story! good luck with "revenge" ;)
Post a Comment