Deus Ex Machina, or He Who Provides Pancakes will be Hailed as a God

So I realize I haven't actually posted much on this blog about teaching in Austria. It has mostly been about living in Austria, and traveling in Italy, and the like. WELL... I suppose the blog has to live up to its name at some point. So I am going to tell a quick story about a game I came up with for the class that turned out to be a lot of fun.

I needed a lesson for my 4th class, and I wanted to something easy and fun. I thought on it, and decided that tea story writing would be a fairly good idea. Being creative is fun, and it would be exciting to see what the students come up with. The question then became how to organize the activity that would prevent an awkward division of labor.

My idea was to make cue cards that the students would receive randomly, each with a word, phrase, or sentence on it that they would have to incorporate into their story, no matter how absurd or ill-fitting it was to the plot that they already had. It also gave me the power to be creative--since the story writing would progress in rounds, I could change the rules of play each round as I saw fit. I called the game Story Snake since we would be piecing the story together with a long string of cue cards.

The students really got a kick out of the game, I think. They had to think on their feet and discuss how they could make cards fit. I really got a kick out of it too, because I could be "mean" to the students by changing fundamental rules midgame to keep them on their toes. The stories were very random... some groups were able to incorporate the cue cards better than others. But that was to be expected.

After class I was thinking about how I could improve the game (mechanics--laminated cards instead of paper ones; different general themes, e.g., fantasy, mystery, or sports; and improvements to the rules, when the following occurred to me: the whole thing sort of works like a Greek play. The stories are completely random, and the plot is driven by the introduction of unanticipated and illogical characters and conditions. The Latin term for this is deus ex machina (literally: "god from the machine"--but a better translation might be "god that we make"). This refers to the penchant in Greek drama to resolve conflicts through the intervention of a god, king, or other character, that has not been previously introduced into the story (or alternatively, has no logical motivation to intervene). It is basically the "easy fix" of literature. God snaps his fingers and all is well in the world. Think Shakespeare's As You Like It. Anyway, I named the game Deus Ex Machina and now part of the lesson is a quick lesson about what this means. Learning Latin in English class from a guy who can't even consistently remember that the word Latin needs to be capitalized. Who would have thought?

In other teaching news, I am making pancake breakfasts for the graduating classes. So far I have done one breakfast (actually it was a full American Style Ordeal complete with scrambled eggs, bacon, pancakes, o.j.... too much work), and I will be doing at least one more. It's a lot of fun to have breakfast with the kids and just chat rather than having to actually teach something. It is a nice way to... I guess connect... even though it happens in the last class we have together. I guess maybe it is a graduation present of sorts. It is lots of fun anyway.

I guess that's all for now. Good night and good luck.