For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for February 28, 2022

L’Anglais est magnifique, non?

Oh they are baaaad!

LMAO !!!

The marvels of verbal conjugation.

Time to move onto lay, lie and laid. Then hang, hanged and hung. Your head will explode.

“Seesaw, Margery Daw…”

Oo, look at the see saw!!

Do you see what I saw??

I sawed the chair. Mum was not amused

I saw Saw. You should see Saw! You should see Saw II too!

If you saw the wood would you saw it?

Please let more people read this. I cannot believe the numbers of people who say “I seen,” and think it’s correct.

Don’t forget the infinitive!

Wise teachers know when to let a commotion burn itself out. Having a glass of water handy to saunter to and sip is strategic.

I make up my own words. Sometimes it’s just easier.

poor sub…

And the verb is “see,” not “seen.”

I had to take English class many times. I wonder if British kids have to take English classes? Do Mexican kids take Spanish classes?(What if they fail. Then what do they speak?)

I’m glad I speak more better.

My mom’s favorite teaching story:

Her: “Ok, we’re going to take a test, so your desks will need to be bare.”

Boy: “There’s going to be a bear here for the test??”

Her: “No, that means your desks can have nothing on them.”

Girl: “But bears have nothing!”

Boy: “Bears have fish!”

Her: “Well, yes, but….”

Girl: “Yes! Can we have fish during the test?”

Her: See last panel.

These weren’t students picking on her, but completely serious first graders. XD

Ahh, the grand old tradition of messing with the sub. ;-)

Not only a substitute teacher these days.

Elizabeth! For shame!

What is this, 4th Grade??

Reads like an Abbott and Costello routine!

When I was in Junior High (in ancient times), the English teacher would assign seats alphabetically. Invariably, Kim P., Kim P. (me), Kim S., Tim S., and Kim W., would be seated in a cluster. We drove substitutes nuts.

There are certain High Schools in my living area that I would NOT sub for. Some unbelievably disrespectful kids.

How much wood could a saw-whet saw

If a saw-whet could saw wood?

(A saw-whet is a type of owl, for those who have never heard of it.)

https://www.audubon.org/sites/default/files/styles/hero_cover_bird_page/public/Northern%20Saw-whet_Owl_KameronPerensovich_FlickrCC_314.jpg?itok=JeF5UOLR

When I worked as a substitute teacher it was pretty rare that the sub plans called for anything other than telling kids to work independently on such-and-such.

My daughter used to love subs in class they did not do much.

I didn’t know these kids were in first grade

English is complicated? No! It’s only like when an unmarried girls gets pregnant – that’s just a misconception.

English punctuation isn’t complicated either. Just consider commas. Why, those things are hardly necessary. Just trying reading this without the commas and you’ll see that it’s still easy to read – “I love cooking, my wife, and children.”

Try looking on YouTube for more examples from the Marx Brothers or the Firesign Theatre.

For kids the age of Elizabeth, Dawn, and their classmates, this would be a remedial English lesson. Did one of their classmates turn in a paper with poor grammar?

Perhaps being a substitute, the teacher decided the easiest thing to do was give a lesson in remedial English?

My pet peeve of poor language is: ‘these ones’ and ‘those ones’…

M O R O N .

brings back memories of my senior English class. We had a new(middle aged)English teacher as the previous teacher had retired. New teacher had zero control over any of his classes. He lasted less than 2 months. Then we walked into class on Monday morning to see our old teacher. The iron discipline lady who just glared at someone to shut them up. A couple of the class cut ups tried to act up and disrupt the class just like they had been doing. But it did not work as they had thought it would. She restored the class back to actual learning in about the first 5 min. A really tough old lady. An excellent teacher, one of only 2 teachers I still recall

I was surprised that we did not see a strip like this:

Substitute teacher: Good morning, I am your substitute teacher. Let me do a quick review of the lesson plan. Ah, here is a note the regular teacher left me….

….OK, which one of you is Elizabeth?

I fired a blind carpenter once. He picked up his hammer and saw.

Subs don’t teach anymore really. They are just there to keep the peace for the most part. My wife works for a school district in drop out prevention and she is required to sub once a month. The teacher has assignments planned and she just supervises.

They’ve got to be messing with you…

Why is Quebec,Canada the only place that refers to pastrami as “smoked meat”?

I had a lesson plan that I used all the time, and it had to do with my own interest that had to do with personal finance, if there was no plan left and the instruction was that they complete assignments. The kids could listen or not, but after about five minutes they listened to me. That was a lesson I remembered from my own high school days, and how interested we all were when that teacher broached that topic with us.

Funny thing is, this works in Swedish too, with “såg”.

Heard this in a sitcom from the 50’s:

Son: Hey Pop, you shoulda seen what I just seen!

Father: No, no: SAW.

Son: You shoulda saw what I just seen!

Father: No, no: SEEN-SAW.

Son: You shoulda seen-saw what I just… that don’t sound right.

“I see”, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.

“I saw Esau sitting on a see saw, I saw Esau, with my girl, giving her a merry whirl. When I saw Esau he saw me, I saw red and got so sore, that I got a saw and I sawed Esau off that old see saw.”

While there are many grammatical errors that make me cringe, I really try to hear (or read) what is being said instead of listening for the poor grammar. Bad grammar is sometimes just a bad habit.

Making puns reflects a mastery of language. I give the kids an A.

“We’re in a room with no windows and no doors! How are we gonna get out?!”“Well, there’s a table and a mirror, so…“Look in the mirror and see what you saw; take the saw, and cut the table in half. Two halves make a whole; just crawl through the [w]hole, and you’re out!”

Imagine if Elly was the substitute teacher. She could correct the class by saying there is no such term as “I seen”, then use the proper term all while keeping her eyes closed, nose in the air, and her finger pointed towards the ceiling.

L’inglese non e fantastico?

For my sins, I’ve BEEN a sub.