the joys of teaching English

I recently did a substitution for a fellow English teacher. Substitutions are always fun - you never know quite what to expect, nor do the course participants. Not infrequently do students want to pick up on previous lessons, seemingly oblivious to the fact that you (the substitute teacher) have little to no idea what the previous lesson was actually about, let alone in what direction the discussion veered off....as they so frequently do. Picture, if you will, my delight when I walked into the "classroom" (a tiny little box of a room filled to the brim with electronic appliances, most of which did not seem to be connected, old files piled carelessly on a shelf and on the floor in front of it, and a (fully functional) coffee dispenser) and discovered this flip chart resting against the far corner of the room. I sincerely hope I'm not infringing any privacy agreements, but this just brought a smile to my face. Cheap thrills, I'll admit. But as we all know: good things come to those who are easily amused.