Messing with their heads

Today I had my low level class, the one with the students who copy everything I write on the whiteboard, in some cases including the colours. I wasn't thinking about this when I started writing on the board today, but first I wrote something in black, and then later went back and picked up the first available pen and it was blue, and yet later went back and added a word or two in red. I was pleased because every pen I'd tried so far worked. It is unusual to have so many working pens on the little ledge.

Shortly after that I was wandering around and sure enough, there was a student faithfully copying everything I'd written in glorious tricolour, his pens all lined up neatly. Every time I'd switched colour, so did he. A couple of other students were doing the same thing. Most of my students write in pencil, and not only in pencil but in very light pencil, so that their notebooks often look blank until you peer closely. Students using pens are a rarity, and I am happy to have three or four in one class.

The university only provides blue, black and red pens for the whiteboards, but just for these pen-wielding students I am thinking of buying my own, extra colours. Some green would be nice, I think. Also, purple, if I can find it. I don't think yellow would show up too well, but orange might, and pink, if it's bright enough.

I'd better not introduce too many new colours at one time, though. If I produce a colour they don't have a corresponding pen for it might cause a panic. But if I introduce the new colours one at a time, and only use the new one for one or two especially important words in the first week, they'll be able to prepare themselves for the next week's festive explosion of colour.

Most of the time I feel like a failure in this class. But today I decided to feel happy that even if my students haven't managed to produce anything much resembling the English language by the end of semester, at least a few of them have produced something pretty to look at.

(I think they need better illustrations, though. Today I noticed that my stick figures (red, mostly) had been copied far too accurately. Perhaps I'll take drawing lessons, too.)