“English Club” Shenanigans II

Today I brought in a bunch of magazines to share with my students. These magazines are the bottom-of-the-barrel selection I found in the Peace Corps volunteer lounge, so we had such gems as Harper’s Bazaar, Essence (a magazine that is geared towards African-American women), and Men’s Health.

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While flipping through Bazaar, several of my Christian boys landed on a spread featuring bikini-clad women. They quickly flipped through it, muttering something about “breaking [their] eyes”. The non-Christian boys who flipped through the same section a few minutes later went noticeably slower in their perusal and their giggle volume was much higher as well.

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While flipping through the same magazine, the non-Christian boys found a spread featuring Gabourey Sidibe, the star of the movie “Precious”. I asked them if they thought she was beautiful. “No!” they replied, giggling ferociously. “She’s too black. And she’s too fat.” Oh, that’s right–being big and being dark are basically automatic tickets to the ugly house in Cambodia!

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When the Christian boys came to the spread on Sidibe, I asked them the same question. They also said no, but I guess felt bad about it, because one boy followed up with, “But…she has good style.” Indeed.

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As per the example of a certain male PCV in Phnom Chiso, Takeo, I decided to do a small activity with my students after they looked at the magazines. I put four pictures on the board: a happy person, a sad person, an airplane, and a hospital. I told them to use the pictures in any order they want to tell a story. One boy came up with this:

“There was a happy man. He went on a trip on the airplane. The airplane crashed. The man decided to steal the money of all the passengers. The police came to catch him but he ran away. The police shoot him in the leg. He was hurt and sad. Then the police took him to the hospital.”

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After the first round, I put a different set of pictures on the board. A tree, a baby wrapped in a blanket, a bowl of rice, and a bike, all roughly the same size. This was followed by a series of unforeseen complications:

“Teacher, why is the baby sleeping in a shoe?” …I didn’t realize my drawing of a baby bundled in a blanket was that bad.

“Teacher, why is the rice the same size as the baby and the bike?”

“Teacher, is that rice or is that ice cream?”

Despite all of this, the same superstar who came up with the above story created this gem of a tale:

“There was  a poor woman who had a baby. She put the baby in a shoe and rode her bike to a tree because she could not feed the baby anymore. A kind family found the baby and took it home. They tried to feed the baby rice but the rice was too big. So they put the baby in the bowl of rice.”

OKAY GUYS. My pictures are NOT to scale. I GET IT!

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I’m not sure what we’re going to do on Monday yet, but you can probably bet that it’s going to be a rib-tickling good time. Easily, easily the best part of my day!