“Whoever Smelt it Dealt it”: Or, the Story of the Worst Class Ever

Before each class period begins, students line up outside their classrooms and wait for the teacher to arrive. When he or she does, the teacher keys into the class, and the students enter by twos, each greeting the teacher with a “bonjour” or “hello, good afternoon” if it’s English class.

They all file to their own seats but remain standing until the teacher has sufficiently arranged homework, lesson plans, etc. The teacher might rattle off a set of announcements or ask for questions, but the students remain standing. When the teacher is ready (no matter how long that may take), he or she then tells the students that they may sit down, and the lesson begins. This is how the students learn to respect their teachers.

For some, however, the standing has become a mere formality, as invisible as tying their shoes in the morning or bringing pencils to class. They remain standing, but talk back to their teachers or hit the student next to them. It is unfathomable the things I have seen here. And makes me grateful that I have chosen to teach in a university setting.

Further evidence of this came on Tuesday, when I was asked to begin working with a class I had not yet seen. It was a class of 30 boys and 7 girls. Yes, you read that correctly. 30 boys and 7 girls. They entered the class not by twos but by clumps of boys hitting each other and jumping on each other’s backs and slamming into the walls. “N’ayez pas peur,” one of the kids said to me. Don’t be afraid. Yeah right, I wanted to say back in French. Too late for that.

It took the teacher ten minutes to calm down the whooping and hollering 30 boys and 7 girls. Then she let them sit down. I was allowed to take half of the class, and somehow, as luck would have it, I got to take the wretched half of the class. “The other half is better,” the teacher would tell me later, “but it was this group’s turn.”

The hour couldn’t go by fast enough, and it dragged on forever. First, the students wouldn’t shut up, then they were running around the classroom, then someone was calling a boy names, then someone’s nose started bleeding…

And then that smell.

“Ewwwwwwwww!” Somebody yelled. “What do they feed you at the cafeteria?” I had to go run and open a window, and several other students did the same. It was wretched. And I was appalled that a student would actually do that in my classroom. The culprit was named, and as much as I wanted to giggle along with my students (okay, so I’m mentally still back in junior high), I had to stand at the front of the class, hands on my hips, with a stern face. “That’s not funny,” I managed to say with a straight face. “Sit down. And don’t talk.”

My students don’t often see Angry Sarah – they are more likely to meet Tired Sarah, Disappointed Sarah, or Oops-I-Need-to-Quickly-Rewrite-My-Lesson-Plans Sarah – but this class got to see the angry version very quickly. Still, since they are immune to yelling (seems teachers here do it often), it didn’t frighten them. So I resorted to my preferred method of discipline: a little something I like to call “distraction therapy.”

Douille housse pic n’glisse? I wrote on the board.

The students stared at the board, their mouths clamped shut, and their heads tilted a little to one side. Everyone was silent. They all knew it was French, but didn’t make any sense. I could see their lips moving, trying to figure it out in their head. Finally, one of them shouted, “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH??” And they all figured out my game.

Marie qui se masse, I wrote. “Madame,” one said, “Marie who gathers what?”

“No, no,” another said. “Merry Christmas! It says, Merry Christmas! You have to say it out loud.”

Pretty soon, they were all shouting, “More! More!” and answering my riddles. They loved it when I wrote “Guy vomit sous mon nez” (literally: Guy vomits under my nose), which sounds like, “give me some money.” And they especially liked “Ame coquine” (literally: flirtatious soul), which sounds like, “I’m cooking.” Seems that distraction therapy wins, after all.

Too bad I didn’t think of that before someone farted.