Not an onscreen kiss!

A rainy Monday

Sadly, today felt exactly like a Monday often does: a bit challenging. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, I’m instituting a new system for my lesson structure -- we’ll spend half the session learning about a specific topic (music, Asian Americans, art, restaurants, etc.) and we’ll spend the remaining class time watching and discussing a movie. At first the students were thrilled by the new format, but they became a little frustrated when they discovered the movie we’re going to watch for the next few weeks is Stardust. 


A few of the girls came up to me after class asking if I could switch the movie to Twilight (this is the fourth or fifth time I've been asked to change an activity). I simply said, “No.” 
They responded with, “Why?” 
To which I replied, “Because this is the movie we’re going to watch.”
They said, “There time for Twilight.”
I calmly informed them, “This is the movie we’re going to watch. There won’t be time for Twilight.”


When some students started grumbling about how they couldn’t comprehend the movie (with subtitles in English and me stopping the film every few minutes to explain the plot), I firmly stated, “You’ve been learning English for ten years. That’s a long time. You should be able to understand this movie. It’s kind of sad you don’t.” With this comment, many of the teens bowed their heads and became silent.


Yes, perhaps this was slightly impolite on my part. However, the students can be quite rude at times and sometimes the only way to clearly explain a point is to be blunt. Extremely blunt. They have horribly stressful lives without much fun, but they are also rather spoiled. If an answer isn’t handed to them on a silver platter, they get angry. That was what happened today and I think it was a valuable experience for them to feel a little lost. At one point I said, “Learning is a bit uncomfortable. If you’re comfortable, it means that you aren’t learning anything and growing.” 


On a slightly different topic, but still pertaining to the discussion of Stardust, during a kissing scene in the movie, most of the students looked away from the screen. It’s sort of strange to me that fifteen and sixteen year olds aren’t mature enough to watch a kissing scene in a teen movie. They must spend too much time studying or something.