I use my cellphone as a stopwatch in class when students are giving speeches. Further, I occasionally allow the students themselves to be “timekeeper” for a given other student’s speech. This means my students are often playing with my cellphone. It doesn’t really bother me, although more than once, I’ve gone back to it later and found its most recently used application was something under the “game” heading — I rarely play games myself on the cellphone because, since it’s a Korean cellphone, it tries to help me play the game with instructions in Korean. I did once manage to get a 37% score on a quiz game entirely in Korean, basically by viewing it as a linguistic abstraction game.
So… I was pulling photos off my cellphone last night, and found the following. I have no recollection of when this photo might have been taken. Is it flattering? I’ve definitely been making a lot of use of my plastic black and red pitchfork (lower left of photo), lately.
I don’t know how to put on the fancy frame, either. But whoever did this picture of me apparently had no problem not only surreptitiously taking this snapshot but then managing to add the fancy frame without my having a clue. I think it was a time when they were brandishing their own cellphones and I was hamming a little bit, so it’s not like I wasn’t aware of having my picture taken. In today’s modern (Korean) classroom, it’s ubiquitous, and something I accept as a matter of course. I suppose that technically, there are rules banning the use of cellphones in class, but I view such rules as both reactionary and irrelevant, and rarely enforce them except maybe during quizzes or when they’re clearly proving too distracting.
…
“Are you devil?” Gina asks, every time.
“Maybe,” I hedge. It’s all part of the schtick, right?
Every teacher needs a schtick. Or a fork. And a coupla alligators (made in China).
