Jew or not a Jew?

stop me if you've heard this one...
a man walks into an education office for an interview.
he meets with a lady and she asks him 3 questions:
"Do you have a HKID card?"
"Do you have any teacher training?"
"Do you have any teaching experience?"
The man, somewhat defeated, responds "No" to all 3.
The lady pauses for a moment, then says "When can you start!?"

it looks like i really impressed with that subbing duty on Saturday, as they have now extended actual full courses my way. in fact, i just returned from my first lesson as part of said course. allow me to break it down for y'all.

it's an 'intro to journalism' class, where the students will go through the process of creating their own school magazine, from design, to photography, layout and writing.
neato!
i'm actually quite excited about the material, as i never had the chance to be part of one of those super cool high school newspaper teams we all remember from 90's TV. eat your heart out, Zuckerman.
i received all of the course materials the night before, and unlike last time, i was sober and eager to review. class couldn't start soon enough.

one catch, of course, is that the school is FAR. i'm talking New Territories far, kids. though that region likely doesn't mean much to anyone back home, with a name like that, it just screams 'why the hell would you go there?' it's in a town called Fanling, and i have definitely never been this far away from the safety of Hong Kong Island. i was probably another 15mins away from mainland China.
no worries though, my work contact tells me there's a direct bus from Wanchai, get me there in just over an hour. fair enough.
yet, for it to be a 'direct bus', there actually needs to be a mother f'n bus. standing at the bus stop like a jerk for about 45 mins, seeing every other bus come and go about 5 times over...and yet still no #373 to speak of. Rich is starting to get concerned. flip my assistant a text to let her know of my difficulties and she talks me through it.
the result?
4 MTR lines, 13 MTR stops and a $150 taxi ride later, i finally arrive at the school 15 mins late. and although i realize this isn't a life&death type of gig, i definitely owe it to these aspiring beat reporters to be there on time. and i failed. at least next time i know what to do.

belated, the class gets going and what a difference a few days make. these kids couldn't be any better behaved. finally, some attentive students facing forward and not throwing their pencil cases each and every way. i did have to speak up a little as i introduced myself though, as the school band practices right next door with glee. decided to ditch the 'Mr Rich', opting for 'Mr Morgan'- the phonetics making much more sense.
i reiterate, the kids are listening...it's brilliant.
i even brought along some real-life materials for discussion - Aline's 'US' vs. My/Atila's 'Rolling Stone'. the class was eating it up.
took a slight detour for a second, when i questioned the merits of archaic print magazines to the super hot digital iPad editions...but figured that could be saved for another day. next, i explain the various roles of a magazine team, from editor to coffee-fetching interns. i ask everyone to get into teams of 4 and appoint roles for the creation of their own magazine company.

things are going well, and i start on my personal tour of the classroom...it's all about 'connecting' with these honour rollers.
a few general questions about the roles, and then i was stopped by a student who had a really pressing question for me -

Student (in broken English) - "Sir, are you a joo?"
Me - "I'm sorry, I didn't hear you, can you repeat?"
Student - "Are you joo?"
Me (still not getting it)) - "I'm sorry, a what?"
Student (turning this into a spelling exercise) - "J-E-W."

yikes.
apparently, the student made the comment based on my nose.
now, don't get me wrong, i certainly don't condone racial profiling in any way, but that's not the point AT ALL.
do i really have a big nose?
shit.

with the awkward near-miss of the anti-Semitic portion of the lecture, the rest of the class was a breeze.
it actually flew by, and i was forced to give the kids homework (read: bastard).
a few kids stuck around after class, and nose notwithstanding, a few suggested that i could be, get this, a model....!
"huh, you kids are wise beyond your years...i'm actually looking to break into the...."

no. not yet, Rich. wait til they need a cover model for this mag....then we'll see who's a model teacher.