I had a student ask me last week, "what's your favorite color?" I said green. Then she asked, "what's your favorite clothes?" I was a little confused by this question and it took a little bit more conversation for her to admit that she wanted to DRAW me. She was gathering information to draw me in "pretty clothes and dress". I laughed and said, sure you can do that. Well, this week she came up to me after class and handed me FOUR drawings of me in various outfits. She said to pick my favorites. I picked the "Princess Marija" and the Halloween-version. Here they are for your viewing pleasure:
My students are weird. But clearly some of them like me enough to draw me. And I'm still occasionally getting a few of them asking for photos after class.... by that time I'm covered in chalk. A few have said they wanted a photo to send to their parents, who have never seen a foreigner before. They've only seen them from movies.
But they're all still pretty shy. I think their overall confidence has grown a bit since the beginning, and I know the ones who will speak up in each class, but I still don't know names. I tallied it a few weeks ago, and I have just around 400 students total. So I definitely don't know their names. I suppose if I had thought of a good system ahead of time, I may have more memorized by now, but I definitely don't know that many. And I probably won't know them at the end of the semester. That's one aspect of being a teacher that I really suck at-- remembering names and faces. I feel a little bad about that, but at this moment, I think it's more important I can give them a taste of America and what I have to offer them than to remember 400 names and faces.
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