What's up, Ez?

So normally when a respectable teacher enters the room, the class monitor will say in a monotone, "Please stand," which the rest of the students will do, and then, "Good morning, Sir," which the rest of the students will repeat.

Since I am clearly not a respectable teacher and can think of nothing more insulting to be called, my first lesson to my classes was to change this practice.

Now it goes like this:
Class: "What's up, Ez?"
Ez: "Nothing. What's up with you?"
Class: "Nothing."
Ez: "Cool, let's begin."

Also, they normally stand and say, "thank you, sir" when I leave, which, since I'm only 6 or 7 years older than them, is likewise ridiculous. Now they say "Peace out, Ez" and I'm much happier.

Curious to see if humor would translate, I gave one class a list of Mitch Hedberg jokes, which was a massive failure. I also failed to adequately censor the list, so one of the words I did teach them was probably a little less than the Standard British English that they're used to. I went around to each of their handouts and blacked out the offending word. I felt like both a bad teacher for exposing them to this word, and then a bad person for trying to shield them from one of the more useful four-letter groupings in the English language. Both feelings turned out to be moot when it became clear that they already knew the word and could adeptly weave it into conversations.

A few more highlights:
I asked the classes to make nametags for themselves so I wouldn't have to remember 150 names. One form 4 class (16 year olds) had some pretty funny guys in it, so they wrote down such common Malay names as "Xeno," "Matt," and "John Doe." I promised to call them these names for the rest of the year. In fact, these are basically the only names that I've remembered thus far. I like John Doe. He's very average.

To introduce themselves, I had the students say their names, their favorite word in English, and one thing they wanted to learn.

I meant for them to say words in English, but I still managed to get "Le Gardenie," which was a new one. I think it was Xeno, Matt, and John Doe who chipped in with "One," "Two," and "Three," which I had to admit, were useful words.

Other good ones were "handsome," which elicited giggles (as do most of my interactions with female students), and "Bane or Boon," correctly defined, no less. I aided in the definition of "bane" by using the example: "Cocaroaches are the bane of my friend Jackie's existance" with an accompanying sketch. They're a smart group of kids because they knew how to spell existance when I doubted myself.

And my crowning moment was when the students laughed at the Mitch Hedberg line,
"The thing that is depressing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as the wall. I played a wall once, they're relentless."

I had two minutes left after that so I played hangman with the kids. The phrase was "Peace out, Ez."