Ciao from Teacher Jail

I recently attained two new classes of bambinis to teach along with the originals about whom I have already blogged.  With these two new classes of eight year olds comes a whole new pile of evidence that is going to land me straight in teacher jail.

Incident the First:

Yesterday morning I was teaching my original Great Bambinos.  They're around ten years old, know pretty excellent English, and all together stole my heart.  I was teaching them about how to say numbers in a dates and order format - "first (1st), second (2nd)" and so on.  The teacher told me to both write the number and write out the letters.  Easy enough.  I write them all out on the board and as I'm admiring my own goodness for teaching the youth of Italy such important things, a little pipsqueak is in front of me.  "Maria Rosa! Maria Rosa! Why you put two Ls in 'eleventh'??" Oh no.  Nope.  I did not just have a Quayle "Potatoe" moment.  As I'm in the midst of swallowing my pride, another little boy says "Oh! Does it have two L's in American English?"  Now I don't know why I did the following, but it just came out.  "Yes, yes it does," I said like the wise teacher I am obviously not, "In Britain (where their English books are from) they use one but America has two."  I'm not proud of what I did.  But it had to happen.

Incident the Second:

Tuesday morning during my own Italian class I realized that I had my (amazing) Budweiser sweater on and I didn't have time to go home and change before teaching my newer class of younger students.  I figured these kids wouldn't get it, being eight year old Italians and all.  I go to the class of my new students and we have question and answer time.  It starts out with the normal - questions about my cultural love of french fries and my lack of a boyfriend.  Then one kid says "What does Bud-wees-ur mean?", followed by every single child in this class room giving their best but failed attempt to say Budweiser.  A couple kids pull out their Italian-English dictionary.  I don't tell them that the King of Beers probably isn't included in their My First English Dictionary book.  I tell them it's a drink like Coca Cola.  They saw right through me.

Incident the Rest: AKA: The Gallery

These are actually adorable, and if they land me in teacher jail it will be worth it.  I got showered with drawings and homemade landyards.  I have uploaded pictures of the drawings for your viewing pleasure.

I like this one because it combines my name in English, Italian, and Christmas Cheer languages.

Please note the attention to detail on my sweater.  Yes, that would be the Anheuser Busch "A".  

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be me or not, but I will accept the compliment of being a British ginger any day.

Love you too bambini.

"You are very pretty. You are tall and sweet. Your eyes and clothes are pretty".  This is adorable, and shows exactly how gigantic these children think I am.

Teaching the children has become highlights of my week and this semester as a whole.  They are so enthusiastic about learning English, it's just adorable. 

Ciao tutti!