Generation Gap

My students are in college, or so I'm told.  Sometimes as I look at my classroom I cannot believe that these people are my age, or in many cases older than me.  (They know none of this and probably think I'm a matronly old woman who makes up grammar exercises on the weekends.)  These are not your average American 22 year olds.  Nearly all of my students have braces, and all of them look like they're about 14.  Class involves endless picking on the opposite sex -- think pinching, hair pulling, laughing hysterically when someone asks if they can go to the bathroom.  The boys stick together, congregated in the back of the classrooms, mumbling to one another under there breath and laughing at their friends when they get something wrong.  The girls sit in the front.  They wear colorful high heels and giggle uncontrollably over every new vocabulary word.  

Perhaps I should have known better than to teach this group of students "relationship" vocabulary.  50 minutes standing in front of them trying to explain the definition of "to hook up" was probably more trouble than it was worth.  Although they were thrilled when I told them that saying, "I hooked up with him" was "super slang."  At one point during class I said the word "sex." This was too much.  Mayhem ensued.  They were inconsolable, laughing hysterically, repeating the word "sex!" over and over until almost every student was hyperventilating with laughter.  I waited it out.  

After they learned their new "relationship" vocabulary I had them write personal ads.  Each of them was assigned a character.  Mayhem again.  When I assigned a boy in my class to be "a girl who was cheated on" I thought he was going to walk out.  In a quiet rebellion he had the "girl who was cheated on" be named "Elena." 

For the most part I adored their ads.  One student assigned to be a "single Dad" wrote, "I'm not a flirty guy but my wife is gone away.  I want to go out with someone who will make me better.  I am an easy laughing guy who can make a crying baby smile immediately. You'll fall in love with me." Another student wrote, "Now I want someone who can take care of me.  I want someone who is not a liar.  I hope I will find someone that have real love.  And I will send my real love from my real heart to you too."  

There was something so simple about what they wrote.  Grammar aside the idea of a "real heart" struck me.  Whether they knew it or not what they wrote echoed quite real emotions, and emotions which made me feel like perhaps we really are the same age.