SHOUTS AND CHEERS

Today I actually heard some shouts and cheers in Room 2, a strange occurrence in my usually staid and somewhat old-fashioned English classes. For one of the few times of the year, we were using the projector to play a vocabulary game, and there was special excitement as I sat down at the keyboard to try to top the winning student score. I did reasonably well, but at the end, when my score came up six points short, a great roar erupted from the students. I must admit to being somewhat shocked by this, since I’m accustomed to mostly sitting with students in fairly serious conversation on literary subjects. I won’t say my classes are humorless, since I see a scattering of smiles as we work our way through stories and poems, but raucous hurrahs are seldom heard. Today, though, there was a splash of mayhem for a few minutes as we played the game, and it was a pleasant surprise to this seasoned and sometimes stuffy teacher. I felt like some of the air had escaped from the balloon of my self-importance. For a second or two, I was an impetuous kid cheering with friends.