Teaching Bloopers!

**Mac Donn** · 5th December 2007 11:20

When I was teaching 6 year olds in Korea I gave them all nickname -mostly little rhymes based on their English name: June Balloon, Blue Sue...etc. One kid was called George so he obviously became Georgey Porgey. Everytime I called him that though he would hang his head. I thought I'll keep going it'll toughen him up until one day a Korean co-teacher asked to speak to me. "They've all got nicknames" I said, "it's good for them, bit of fun" i argued defensively. She asked me to stop calling Little George 'Georgey Porgey'. Ia asked her why and she told me that'porgey' meant something in Korean. I asked her what and she went bright red and turned coy. I kept pushing her until exasperated she finally blurted out "vagina". -Ooooppps!

**kikiat** · 5th December 2007 22:58

Originally Posted by wangsuda

So here I am, pulling English, math, and science lessons out of thin air. This will be a day to remember.

you'll be surprised how fast one gets used to pulling lessons out of thin air

it's the only way to go for me.

**Cyrille** · 5th December 2007 23:48

^ it could be wangsuda's 'rennersance'

**wangsuda** · 6th December 2007 06:57

^ I heard that!

**Roc** · 14th January 2008 15:09

I was walking around for half an hour with my fly unzipped!!

**Lizara** · 14th January 2008 16:17

One night, for no obvious reason, I couldn't sleep. At all. I don't know how I made it through the next day at school, but somehow I did okay until my last couple of classes. I was teaching my last class of the day about senses: How does a lemon taste, how does a teddy bear feel, and so on, and I was asking them questions, and it all went fine until, without thinking, I asked, "How does music smell?" Utter silence for a few seconds, and then we all burst out laughing.

**Saint Michael** · 31st January 2008 20:42

I was playing the word chain game with my prathom 5 students today and having them make a sentence with the word the picked. A lot of the students say something simple like "I like a...." or "I have a...." Everything was going smoothly till one girl used the word rubber. Of course her sentence was "I have a rubber".

**The Boss** · 28th March 2008 21:06

Our school uses "my Pals Are Here" as an English / maths book - one of the sentences in the book reads, The pen is longer than a ruler" Be careful when writing and spacing this on the board as it could transfere to, "The penis longer than a ruler"

**process** · 28th March 2008 21:31

The pen is longer than a ruler

eeeew looks crap to me..... the pen is longer than the ruler...ok..
& how many pens do u see that are longer than rulers?!

change books!

**bcqcboy** · 6th April 2008 13:38

Originally Posted by Roc

I was walking around for half an hour with my fly unzipped!!

I've done that on several occasions.

**markg** · 17th April 2008 15:44

Thankfully not me, but a recent Canadian female graduate. She wrote Wensday 21st Febuary on the board. I looked through the kids books. Sure enough, once a week, the date was written as Wensday. I questioned her about it and she argued to the point of hysteria that there is only one 'd' in Wednesday and only 1 'r' in February.
She didn't last long. Which is a shame cos she was as cute as hell with big hooters. Would have made a nice change to the 'ironing board with 2 fried eggs on it'

We've had two female teachers who have ripped their trousers from stem to stern. One was wearing a rather natty pink g-string. The b@stard kids (M3) didnt tell her for 20 mins either apparently. Snigger!

The only one i will hold my hands up, was more than a blooper, it was tantamount to lesse majeste. In a complete pig-sty of an M2 classroom, litter and paper all over the floor, i went mad at the kids for being so untidy. In the middle of my rant, for dramatic effect, i kicked an A4 sized piece of polystyrene as hard as i could. It sailed slowly and gracefully up into the air and flipped through 180 degrees, to show a picture of His Majesty. I was HORRIFIED and thought i would get fired and locked up. Thankfully, the Thai head of department saw sense, and came up and completely bollocked the kids for allowing a picture of the King to be on the floor.

**tazmanian** · 4th June 2008 19:55

In my early days I felt I had got quite friendly with a certain adult class so I put a "debate" question on the board:

"Was Thaksin right to lie and say there was no bird flu in Thailand?"

(This was during the bird flu scare.)

Well, you can probably guess what happened. Two lawyers who loved Thaksin and a Red Bull sales manager who hated him launched into it (in Thai) and spent the rest of the lesson glaring at each other.

Bringing up politics in class, what the heck was I thinking?! :-)

**Lizara** · 11th June 2008 00:00

This took place, as many of our stories do, on my very first day of teaching at my new school in Thailand, the time when you really want to make a good first impression. I had to teach a whole class of 45 P1 students with two Thai teacher assistants to help me. This isn't our usual teaching situation; it was just how they started us off this year while the kids got used to school. I had to teach out of some workbook the Thai teachers had put together, and the first lesson was the alphabet.

So I walked into class, introduced myself, wrote the alphabet on the board, and started teaching. By the time I got to about H I was feeling very, very unwell. Around P, I collapsed. I woke up a couple of minutes later with the Thai teachers shaking me and looking very worried. They took me to the nurses' office where I stayed drinking sugar water for the next half hour or so. I only had the one class that day, so I spent the rest of the day avoiding the rest of my coworkers and the inevitable question of how my first class had gone. My boss found me at one point and asked and I kind of mumbled something about being sick and then he let me go home, where I immediately went to the computer and read this very thread looking for equally embarrassing stories to make me feel less awful.

I've managed to stay upright for the last few weeks of school, so I feel that I've proven myself and can now tell this story with equanimity. At the time I was mortified, worried about being fired, and envisioning a room full of terrified kids who then went home and told their moms who then called the school... thankfully, none of that happened and in fact I haven't heard anything about the incident since.

**ben** · 11th June 2008 00:13

Standing in front of 34 grade 3s I was told to teach them a song and dance for a performance, like an idiot I bent down and my pants tore, that was amusing for the kids.

Sometimes I do something stupid just to break the ice, works well, they are kids like so....

Another Example(Embarrasing Moment): I was at a joint seminar with the British Council, A finnish university and The Ministry of Education, we were giving an activity to do, can't remember exactly but I had written pronunciation as pronounciation without a thought. The other Thai teachers were quick to point out my mistake to the seminar organisers that was quite embarrasing.

Countless embarrasing moments if I really give it a lot of thought, more than I would like to mention.

**Nuntiwan** · 11th June 2008 02:13

When I was in Jr High... In History class.. My teacher put in a video... turned it on... and it was a PORNO!!!!!!! my lord, the class could not stop laughing some were in awwww and some were disgusted. haha. talk about " oops " !