My students took a test and hilarity ensured

So, I don’t normally associate tests with hilarity. But today was quite a different story. My junior high second graders (8th graders) had a test today, which they all found pretty difficult. The test was made up of two worksheets front and back over different parts of the unit they just finished. Each sheet had different sections like vocabulary, translating sentences, a listening section, reading comprehension and filling in the blanks. Pretty standard stuff.

So a bit into the test one of the kids raised his hand. He is a pretty good student, in the top half of the class. He wanted to know what the word “bring” was in Japanese. And of course we wouldn’t tell him, because the entire point of the question was to translate the English sentence into Japanese. He wasn’t the only one trying to pull that little trick. I would read the word out loud for them, but that was it. So anyway, he tried asking the teacher a few times all of which got no answer. And then he said the following gem, completely in English, “I don’t like English (pause) because (pause) I don’t like Mr. Kiyota!”  I made a sad face when he said he didn’t like English, but once the rest was said I couldn’t help but laugh. My teacher responded with a light hearted, “I like you very much.”

I then told the students “Do your best!” And the best student in the class looked up and sighed (again all in English), “I don’t have a ‘my best.’” I just about died. None of them were being serious of course. If they were being serious they would not have used English. It was so hard to keep from giggling the entire class. And I was thrilled that they were able to express themselves in English regardless of how silly they were being.

I don’t know, maybe this will all only be amusing to me. Maybe you had to be there and maybe you have to know the kids. But from my perspective it was really funny. Test taking classes are normally really boring and sometimes the teachers don’t even ask me to go to them. But this one was really memorable.