My students came to class drunk on Friday. Well, I should say a couple of my students, in my last class of the night--you know, the one at the ridiculous hour of 9:15-10:45--showed up buzzed, with one among them blurry-eyed, head in his hands, asking to go to the bathroom every fifteen minutes, drunk.
It started as I was waiting for the students trickle in. A group of five or so guys, who always sit together in front of the class were chatting and making jokes as they usually do when I noticed one guy pass another a 2 liter bottle of lemon Fanta. "Que rico esto!" (Mmm, that's tasty!) he exclaimed after he took a swig. I light went off in my head. Are they doing what I think they're doing? I shot them a look and instantly they knew I knew. Laughing and chattering in Spanish ensued, and I barked at them to cut it out and went to the board to begin the day's lesson.
A few minutes into the lesson is when I noticed the drunkard of the group. They kept making comments and laughing at him, with him waving them off and putting his head down on the desk. "What is going on here???" I asked them, though of course, it was already clear that we all knew the answer to that question. "Are you kidding me?" I asked, in English, but my exasperated tone was, I'm sure, understandable in any language. "Do you need to leave?" I asked him. "No, Miss," he muttered, and hiccuped. "Oh Jesus," I muttered. "Missss, it's just because he's so flaco (skinny)" one of his friends offered. I had to fight my smile back. "Alright, enough! Who can tell me what's wrong with this sentence?"
I guess I can't really blame them. My class is their last class of the week, it's at 9 PM on Friday night, and it's English--a class that the majority of them view as kind of a joke. It probably doesn't help that their teacher is obviously (no matter how I try to hide it) around their same age, and doesn't totally speak their language. Maybe I shouldn't admit it, but I found it at least a little amusing. Not the blatantly drunk boy--that was just too much. It was distracting for the rest of the class and he couldn't function at all. But his friends...yes, it was disrespectful of them to come to class drunk, but if it weren't for the skinny boy, I probably wouldn't have realized. In all honesty, I actually probably would have thought that the class had gone particularly well--they were extra chatty, and not just in their side conversations. I guess the Fanta and whatever it was loosened their inhibitions with speaking English.
They better not make a habit of "haciendo la previa" (pregaming) before my class, but if a drink or two it makes it so that I don't have to drag every English word out of their mouth, well, call me a bad teacher, but I don't think I'd mind it every once in a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment