Grow Up, Teacher!

I wish I were more mature. Last week I had my students bring in one word that they’d heard and learned in recent days. Hans brought peephole. “Okay, now give me a sentence with peephole in it, so the others can guess what it means.”

He thought for a moment, and then spoke. “I can see Stanley through my peepeehole.”

I totally lost it. He looked completely baffled. I put my head into my hands. I tried to bite the smile out of my lips. I walked to the window, opened the blinds and looked out. I came back and started laughing again.

It wasn’t even funny, and it was certainly the most juvenile form of humor imaginable. It’s just that it was so unexpected. Plus, I’m a visual person. The image of him looking at Stanley in that manner was too much for me.

I’ve probably ruined the kid for life: humiliating him in front of his peers.

Actually, he’s a pretty arrogant and lazy kid, so I guess he’ll live. And later, I realized that they really didn’t know what was happening. So the worst thing was that I had to try to explain the error and why it amused me.

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