teaching high

Today we were talking about the environment in my sophomore speaking class.
The second activity was a role-play with a rainforest/oil reserve scenario. The students, in four groups, prepared arguments in the roles of people who live in the forest, people who live around the forest, an environmentalist group, and the oil company wishing to tap oil beneath the forest. Representatives of each group presented to the class, which was now the government panel convened to make a decision on what would be done.

In full character, early sallies from the environmentalists were such:
"You are so stupid, do you want to die?!"
And early insults from the oil company:
"Do you want to eat bananas and play with monkeys all your life?"

After each had presented, several students remained up front, asking to make rebuttals... as the impromptu debate escalated, the entire class was totally engaged, with gasps, oohs and aahhs and spontaneous applause after particularly well delivered points. Students started jumping up from their seats to join those arguing up front until there were 10 students up there, and more in their seats offering advice. Now the arguments included exchanges like this:
"You say your company will be green. But oil is black! How will you make the oil green?!"
"We are not trying to paint walls!"
The impromptu debate lasted a good 45 minutes and would have gone on much longer had I not called a stop just before the bell rang. I am SO PROUD of them! They hit on many different arguments and were using their English to the full conotations of many words.

A photographer from the School of Foreign Languages stopped by to take some pictures for the department and I probably have this ridiculous grin on my face in most of them because the entire class was a total teaching high.