As I was pondering the topic of ChatGPT for this post, I thought back to when I took ENG101 in the early nineties; most of us were still still submitting handwritten essays on paper. (In ENG102 the following semester, I upgraded to typing my essays at the computer lab and printing them out for submission. I just had to be careful not to lose the floppy disk!)

For nostalgic purposes, I began to write out the first draft of this post on line-ruled paper. When I got to the fourth full page, I was reminded of how time consuming it is to write by hand how my wrist and fingers quickly get sore. So I took a break…

It was during this writing “downtime” that thoughts about my post continued to swirl in my head, and then I came to realize what makes the often tedious writing process worth it: the hunt. The hunt for stimulating words, the hunt for vivid imagery, the hunt for creative ways of expression – all in the deep jungle of ideas and concepts.

Then I thought: Imagine if hunters were given the option of bypassing all the tedious work of getting a hunting license, getting hunting gear, improving their aim with target shooting, then going out to the wilderness and sitting, waiting, pursuing and eventually killing (for lack of a better word) their game… How many of them would want to instead feed some info into a supercomputer and have their prize deer, ducks, and elk tagged and bagged, ready for their selfie?

I would imagine not many. I’m not a hunter of animals, but I do consider myself a hunter of creative ideas. And just like hunting, sometimes you’ve just got to stay quiet and still, and the game will come to you, often when you least expect it.

So I think it’s important to convey to students that most worthwhile writing  doesn’t start when we put pen to paper, or start tapping the keyboard, or feed data into ChatGPT – it starts waaay before, along the one-point perspective line of our lives and to that vanishing point in our past – you know, that time we’re nostalgic for.

Every semester, I have my ESL students do fun learning activities on the whiteboards. It allows them to do some fun tangible activities and gets them out of their seats.

Vase Auction

For this activity, I have several students go to the whiteboard and draw a vase. 

Then, we hold a vase auction. The other students get to bid on the vases. Invariably, bidding starts at two or three dollars and jumps to thousands, millions, sometimes even zillions of dollars. During the fun, students learn vocabulary (vase, auction, bid). Afterwards, we discuss it so they can practice using past tense verbs (so difficult but important for ESL students!): “I bought a purple vase.” “We had an auction.”

Ambidextrous Drawings

In another activity, I begin with the question “Are you right-handed or left-handed?” We have a brief discussion about it. One student told us that, as a child in her native country, the teacher forced her to be right-handed by smacking her left hand with a stick.

I then demonstrate how to draw two things simultaneously with both hands (I first saw someone do it on TV in the 90’s, and it blew me away!).

Then, I have several volunteers go to the board and do their own “ambidextrous drawings.” Afterwards, they again get to practice using past tense verbs : “I drew two fish.” “I drew houses.”

Drawing in the Present Continuous Tense

Another activity I have them do is draw something and describe it with a sentence using the present continuous tense. Here are some examples:

This last one stands out – because it’s me (wearing my Henley shirt and cardigan sweater)! I think I just found a fun profile picture…!

I love reading, but sometimes I buy books just for their physical design. I use them in class when we have discussions comparing physical and digital media. Here is my book “show and tell…!”

Artenol

These “Artenol” magazines (now defunct, I believe) have unique “die-cut” edges.

(The Fredrich Nietzsche issue includes a rare peek at his eyeball on page 17!)

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern

Issue 53 of “McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern” includes eight “inflatable stories!” (I’ll read them as soon as I find my balloon pump…!)

Adbusters

This 2004 issue of “Adbusters” has a hole right through the middle that lines up with some of the artwork inside.

Flim-Flam!

The previous owner of this James Randi book Flim Flam was not a fan of the author’s skepticism of pseudoscience, passionately expressing disagreements in annotations throughout the book!

I normally don’t like to buy used books that are already too marked up, but this one is great for starting discussions about annotating.

Album of Dinosaurs

I just got flashbacks of my first show & tell in kindergarten, a book I still have: Album of Dinosaurs, so I just had to include it…!

One day, in an ESL class, I had the students get up and do a brain break where they each made up their own dance. I played the instrumental karaoke version of All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow.

What was great about it is that I had a deaf student who was the star dancer of the day! He was really jammin’!

It helped me realize that the best music often doesn’t come from the outside but radiates out from within us.

Go ahead and start dancing to whatever music is radiating from you right now. Who cares if this ain’t no disco…!

A little too wall-papery… Why would I have eleven copies of the same books…? Nope. 

How about…

Ah yes…! Looks nice. Arranged in a beautiful spectrum. Wait a minute… Swiss Graphic Design… Healthcare Spaces… Neubauwelt… I don’t know anything about these… What if someone asks me…? Pass.

 How about something with a skull? You know, the classic memento mori thing…

Uh… let’s see… ok, a skull… some kind of lizard… creepy bookcase design… something preserved in a jar… Uh, kind of cool, I guess… but no. 

Aha! 

Yes! Here it is! A messy black-hole swirl of books that just keep piling up and that, if I’m honest with myself, I know I’ll never get around to reading. 

Actually… Maybe I’ll just go with the first one. Less existential dread and all that stuff. 

I always remind my writing students that they should choose interesting topics based on their own life and experiences. I try to give them examples from my own life that I think might engage them. So when we begin discussing how to write a “process” paragraph, I tell them about how to catch a scorpion.

Let me explain… During the summer, my wife and I regularly find scorpions that wander into our house. I say wander because I know that they’re not doing it maliciously (even if they do have menacing pincers, a poisonous stinger, and armor that always makes me feel that I’m face to face with a creature from one of the Alien movies). They just happen to wander through a crack while looking for water, a cool environment, or a bug to eat. But most of my life, without giving it a second thought, I would smash any six- or eight-legged creatures that wandered into our house.

Then one day, I questioned myself: Why was I automatically defaulting to smash-bug- scrape-remains-off-the-floor mode? I realized that, 99% of the time, I didn’t really have to kill them. So I decided to devise a catch-and-release method. The next time I saw a scorpion in the house, I got a clear plastic cup and covered it, slid a heavy sheet of paper underneath, then flipped it right side up, allowing the confused creature to fall into the cup. I then took it outside and tossed it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard. Just kidding – I tossed it in the farthest corner of our backyard where it could hide in the bushes or under a rock.

So last semester, when I introduced my students to the process paragraph, I began by discussing my scorpion-catching method. To make it engaging, I brought in a real scorpion to class. Just kidding again – I brought a rubber scorpion, a plastic cup, and a heavy piece of paper and then demonstrated the steps of how to do it. I then asked for a couple of volunteers to try it. They were a bit uneasy (a fake rubber scorpion can be almost as scary as a real one) Then, as a class, we worked together to craft an example of a process paragraph outlining the steps.

For more than a year now, I can proudly say that I have no scorpion blood on my hands. When I told a friend about all this, he commented, “That’s very Buddhist of you.” Yes it is, although I’m not a Buddhist. I’ve just become more conscious of how we treat the creatures among us.

But before you begin complimenting my humane treatment of arachnids and other critters too much, I must also let you know that when it comes to flies, it’s a totally different story. I catch them and pull their wings off, then watch them hop around trying to get airborne. Once again, just… you know.

I usually have my students take a quick brain break midway through class to help take their minds off of thinking too much and sitting waaaay too much.

One favorite activity begins with me asking what a basic happy face looks like. Simple: A circle, two dots and a curve.

Then I have them go to the board and draw their own version of a happy face…

What

is

your

happy

face…?

Keep an eye out… you just may see some of these students walking around campus – You’ll recognize them by their smiles…!

During their college years, students must – like it or not – become writers. They must begin to see like a writer, listen like a writer, feel like a writer, even smell like a writer. Uh… yeah…

And the first step to becoming a good (albeit temporary) writer…

Learn to observe.

I have my students complete weekly observing activities to get them accustomed to actively gather ideas for their writing. Every week, they must go out and make observations on a range of areas: the GCC campus, human behavior, food, animals, money, clothing, their major, and art, to name just a few.

I also share my own weekly examples; here are some observations I’ve made recently:

Smaller birds will attack hawks to keep them out of their area.

Just a few years ago, poke was virtually nonexistent in the Phoenix area – now poke restaurants are becoming ubiquitous.

Some panhandlers have come up with creative signs; I saw one that said, “I’m down to my last million – help me please!”

My students have discovered some “gems in the rough” of their own. For example:

Parents are more lenient than before.

When people have to present a project, they usually have something that they do. Like some people twirl their hair and others tug on their shirt.

Children usually act more hyper than adults but also are more honest than adults.

Some gems are rougher than others, but at least they’ve begun to hone their observing skills. And as students progress through college, they’ll continue to develop what Robert Ingersoll called the “Holy Trinity of Science”:  Reason, Observation, and Experience.

Then, the sky’s the limit. Look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane…!

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At the beginning of my ESL classes, I often hand out strips of paper with a single warm-up question that can be answered relatively quickly (I haven’t timed them, but I think the average is 10 seconds). This gives students an incentive to arrive on time to get a few points and partake in an interesting warm-up discussion. Some examples: What do you often dream about? What is your greatest fear? If you changed your name, what would it be? Recently,  I gave them this question:

How much money do you need to be happy?

They quickly began to pencil in their answers; as each student finished, I collected their strips of paper. One student was taking longer than the usual 10 seconds. We joked that he must be writing quite a lot of zeros! He turned his in and we discussed the amounts everyone had written. The lowest was “$20” – the highest was a tie between “too much” and “whatever Jeff Bezos has.”

Then I asked them, “Do you know of a word in English to describe an amount so large that it can’t even be counted..?” Being ESL students, they were stumped, so I explained that they can use the term “a zillion.” I then passed out zillion dollar bills. They beamed and were amazed because they look and feel like real money. One student said, “Wow! Now I can quit my job!” Another said, “I’m going to buy a house – and I’ll be getting some change back!” One asked “How many zeros are in a zillion?”

I asked them, “So, now do you feel happier?”  

The answer was a resounding “Yes!”

For a few minutes, these students smiled and laughed together, helping to build connections and community in the classroom, something that just may bring more happiness than a zillion dollars.