An eager student brought to school the textbook he uses in private classes to show me a section on New Zealand it contains. I was stoked to see some attention being given to our little country, but most of all, I was intrigued to learn about the Maori. The Maori used to hunt a huge, flightless bird called the Mao (which is now extinct), and it’s from this bird that they got their name. The things you learn, eh.
Hey, it would make perfect sense if the Moa was indeed called the Mao, but sadly I think the authors got a little carried away with the wrong end of the taiaha on this one.

I finally had a tenuous grip on my Friday afternoon class. Okay, to be completely honest, I’d given up on telling the slackers to stop talking, and was making the whole class copy questions off the board and answer them in their own words. Then another teacher comes in – the Head, or Deputy Head, or someone else with an inflated sense of self importance. No sooner had she opened the door than she starts tearing strips off a kid at the back of the room. Read the rest of this article »

I was going to write a couple of weeks ago about how cool my students are for giving at least two hoots about politics, for knowing who Che Guevara is (other than that funny looking silhouette on Hallensteins’ t-shirts), and for going on strike to oppose the proposed education law amendment. And well, yes, I still think they’re great for those reasons.

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Living largely in Spanish, and giving classes in English has made me reflect on the way we use language: the ease with which we use our native tongue, and the way we modify it depending on who we are speaking with. I know nothing about linguistics, but am finding it interesting to ponder the subject, and I’m interested to hear your ideas on it too.

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