Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Writer's Workshop #3...I Could Only Laugh On the Inside

The Writer's Workshop topics didn't inspire me too much this week, but one from last week did. On Monday I was kind of involved in a conversation that made me guffaw on the inside.

I was in a speech IEP this afternoon. For those of you not in education, this is a parent meeting with the speech teacher, the classroom teacher, and an administrator to discuss a child's progress and goals for their speech and language time. At today's meeting the administrator was also the translator as the child's parent doesn't speak English.

During the meeting, the speech teacher went over the goals that were set at the last IEP meeting and shared the child's progress. She asked me about his articulation in the classroom. She then told the mother about some concerns. It seems as if he still has trouble making his "sh" sound. The parent asked what she could do at home to help him, and the speech teacher gave some recommendations. After the recommendations were translated this was the conversation that took place...

Speech Teacher: Oh, wait, is there a "sh" sound in Spanish? (Certainly an acceptable question for someone who doesn't know the language.)

Translator: (Finishing up the translation) Yes.

Speech Teacher: Oh, right, ha, ha, Spanish (emphasizing the "sh" at the end of the English word 'Spanish')

It took every fiber of my being to not laugh out loud. The translator looked at me out of the corner of her eye and muffled a laugh.

Stop by and visit Mama's Writer's Workshop. Thanks to Hula Hank for the "info" on linking up the above picture, but if anyone wants to explain to me in English this time, please do. :)

11 comments:

  1. I was going to laugh at the idiocy, but maybe I should reserve my judgement this week.

    Well. The HTML code is confusing when one cannot write exactly as you would write the code when entering in to the place were you actually need the html code due to the fact that bogger comments would read it as HTML and not as someone relaying how to write a certain bit of html code.

    Of course, however the picture was linked, you did it! Congratulations!

    And PS - Was this Jesus's mother that was at the meeting? What? Was god busy?

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  2. It's a pity we so language ignorant in the US.

    When we lived in Germany, I arrived not speaking a word of the language so enrolled in a class in the nearest city of any size. I wound up carpooling with a guy from Kosovo who had grown up speaking Serbo-Croatian. He also spoke Italian, Spanish and quite a bit of English. And he wasn't unusual at all.

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  3. Well when I heard this story, I laughed on the outside...very loudly!

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  4. This education thing is a real laugh riot.

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  5. Yikes!!! That is funny but kinda scary too...

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  6. Wellsh. Ish don'tsh seesh what'sh sho funnysh aboutsh thatsh storysh. Theresh aresh langaugesh thatsh usesh lotsh ofsh sh soundsh.

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  7. You could send that into reader's digest. They would print that one for sure!

    You have more class than I, I would have snorted in attempts not to laugh.

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  8. good control, I'm impressed! You must be more mature than me!

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  9. Holy Hannah! That's so funny... and sortta sad too. Hey Hula Hank! How do you pronounce HTML anyway? :) I KID! Good stuff Pumpkin Delight!

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