Spelling Story

This is just a short post. My apologies to those of you who have been following my blog for not putting up more lately.

A few weeks ago, Koreans celebrated Chuseok, their harvest festival or Thanksgiving. It was a short week and most of my students were anxious for free-time and rice cakes.

So we took it easy. I showed them a short video and played a number of games intended to compare Korean Thanksgiving with American Thanksgiving. Most of my lessons were unremarkable. But in one, I was left completely dumbfounded by either my students' confusion, or their ability to play some post-modern practical joke on me...

One of the games we played in this lesson was a modified spelling bee. I would ask about words having to do with Thanksgiving in America. An obvious one was "turkey."

But in one class, the first person to raise his hand to spell turkey exclaimed "R-A-B-B-I-T."

"Um... no," I said, thinking perhaps this student had misheard or had some other problem. I went to the next student.

"R-A-B-B-I-T."

"No. I said. That's how you spell rabbit..."

Third student. "T-U-R-C-A-Y."

"No," I said, "but closer."

I went to the fourth and final student before I began questioning reality.

"R-A-B-B-I-T."

My only possible explanation is that another teacher decided to play a horrible trick on these students and teach them that you spell "turkey" as "rabbit," simply hoping this exact tale would play out.

Well other evil teacher... if that's true, I hope you find this story and see your devious plot was successful.