A True English Teacher Now

Ok, you’ll need some background for this story.

First of all, I give my English classes a weekly grammar/vocabulary quiz. The second half of the quiz always requires them to read a chapter from The Elements of Style (or some other writing book) and to improve sentences with either grammatical or stylistic errors.

It sounds boring, but I’d rather my quizzes not be too boring. So, I make up tremendously silly sentences for the quiz.

An example sentence: “The new king, who had been a long-time person, began his reign by declaring himself a god.”

Or: ““I know what you did last summer,” Jesus said to the classroom full of high school students; that was sort of scary.“

In an effort to make crazy quiz sentences easier to write, I last year created a character—Bruce Wi, the ninja midget bandit. Each week, there’s a new sentence to the story of his adventures.

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The second thing to know: Have you heard of the Chuck Norris facts?

Chuck Norris facts are silly statements about how all-around awesome Chuck Norris is.

For instance: “Jesus walked on water, but Chuck Norris swam through land.”
“Chuck Norris has counted to infinity—twice.”
“Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.”
“There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’s beard, only another fist.”

I’m guessing that you get the picture.

Anyway, my students, especially the guys, evidently are acquainted with the Chuck Norris facts.

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So, what happened last week is this. I’m grading something else up at my desk and the students are taking the quiz.

All of a sudden, I hear one student scream: “NOOOOOOoooOOOoOOO!!! That couldn’t happen!!! That couldn’t happen!!! Read number twenty-five!!!”

One of the students read number 25 aloud: “There is no doubt that Bruce Wi is the most awesome dude in the world, now that he has destroyed Chuck Norris.”

At that point, there was an uproar from all of the males, who sit on the same half of the room. “No, Chuck Norris is awesome. Bruce Wi couldn’t defeat him.” “No, guns don’t kill people, Chuck Norris kills people.” “No, guess what’s going through the minds of Chuck Norris's enemies as he defeats them—Chuck Norris’s shoe.”

Finally, I assured them that they were just wrong. Bruce Wi was awesomer because I said so. And they quieted back down to their quiz. We are all aware them I am awesomer than them.

After a few moments, there was another eruption: “Awe man, that really sucks.” And another, “No. No… Lies!!!” Then, a few of them started weeping.

Number 26: “It is inevitable that Bruce Wi will take on Norris again, as soon as Norris is able to grow back his beard.”

So, I think I finally accomplished the ultimate English-teacher goal—-making my students cry with a grammar quiz. I didn’t know that that was how I would succeed at it though.

And I didn’t know it would be so easy.