Time Machines? Hoo-yah.
A couple of good things came out of class today:
First, in my effort to amuse myself and get my students to become the most finely tuned English speaking machine ever created, I taught them "Hoo-yah!" as the most acceptable affirmative response. So when I ask them if they understand, I now get a chorus of "hoo-yah!" which is so much cooler than "yes, teacher." I grabbed it from the Military, but forget what it was supposed to be exactly, so that's why they're different. I haven't quite standardized them to shouting it whenever they want to say yes... yet. But give me time. I have 6 months to create the baddest, most disciplined, English classes that the East Coast of Malaysia has ever seen.
For lack of anything better to do, I decided to teach my kids the Grandfather Paradox. I figured that if we just get talking interesting things will happen, so we just needed a conversation starter. And it just so happens that the temporal complications of what would happen if you killed your grandfather (accidentally, of course) when he was young is a great ice breaker. When I asked them what they could do to avoid the paradox, they gave three answers:
1. What if your grand mother is already pregnant?
2. What if you could clone your (dead) grandfather?
3. It doesn't matter since you're clearly already alive.
The last one could be an explanation of alternate timelines and parallel universes, which I then briefly discussed. They might think I'm crazy, but I'm really enjoying my classes. I accidentally taught them the word "would" during the hypothetical discussion of time travel, so we talked about that as a grammar point, something that carried over into my next class period as well.
I had that class write down what they would do if they had a time machine, and one of the kids broke my heart with her answer.
"I would see again my parents." She didn't explain it and I didn't ask, but wow. That's some heavy stuff. Of course, then she followed that up with:
"I would go to the library."
So there's a sincere chance that she would just use the time machine to do things she can already do, in order to avoid any serious complications to the timeline.
Did you avoid creating a paradox during your time travels to the library?
"Hoo-yah."
First, in my effort to amuse myself and get my students to become the most finely tuned English speaking machine ever created, I taught them "Hoo-yah!" as the most acceptable affirmative response. So when I ask them if they understand, I now get a chorus of "hoo-yah!" which is so much cooler than "yes, teacher." I grabbed it from the Military, but forget what it was supposed to be exactly, so that's why they're different. I haven't quite standardized them to shouting it whenever they want to say yes... yet. But give me time. I have 6 months to create the baddest, most disciplined, English classes that the East Coast of Malaysia has ever seen.
For lack of anything better to do, I decided to teach my kids the Grandfather Paradox. I figured that if we just get talking interesting things will happen, so we just needed a conversation starter. And it just so happens that the temporal complications of what would happen if you killed your grandfather (accidentally, of course) when he was young is a great ice breaker. When I asked them what they could do to avoid the paradox, they gave three answers:
1. What if your grand mother is already pregnant?
2. What if you could clone your (dead) grandfather?
3. It doesn't matter since you're clearly already alive.
The last one could be an explanation of alternate timelines and parallel universes, which I then briefly discussed. They might think I'm crazy, but I'm really enjoying my classes. I accidentally taught them the word "would" during the hypothetical discussion of time travel, so we talked about that as a grammar point, something that carried over into my next class period as well.
I had that class write down what they would do if they had a time machine, and one of the kids broke my heart with her answer.
"I would see again my parents." She didn't explain it and I didn't ask, but wow. That's some heavy stuff. Of course, then she followed that up with:
"I would go to the library."
So there's a sincere chance that she would just use the time machine to do things she can already do, in order to avoid any serious complications to the timeline.
Did you avoid creating a paradox during your time travels to the library?
"Hoo-yah."
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_That_Ends_Well
as portrayed by the fondly remembered show FUTERAMA. But then again, it does bring up some pretty challenging questions that I don't think devoutly Muslim children are allowed to discuss.