text: well i'm an english teacher and i'm dealing with a great mass of boring people how can i cheer them up?   might i suggest a reading assugnment. good books for jr high and high school age group are "that was then and this is now" by se hinton and one other book by him "the outsiders" about a couple of gangs of kids  http://www.sehinton.com/books/thatthen.html http://www.sehinton.com/books/outsiders.html  he also wrote rumblefish http://www.sehinton.com/books/rumfish.html  have it as a reading assignment there are slang phrases in the book that can be looked at in english and the class can say which way it should have been said.   you can also do a little acting in your class at the end of the book they can write what happened to the people after the end ofthe story and in groups act it out