Puppy Training

Students come up to me all the time having to go to the bathroom. I get like 10 a day. I wish they'd go during lunch or something (I have to) but I guess when the teacher lets you go to the bathroom, you don't waste precious socializing time going when you could be spending precious instructional time instead. However, I usually don't deny the students the right to go, though I may make them wait until I'm done teaching: the last thing I need is to have some kid pee on my floor!

Anyways, I had a student ask if he could go to the bathroom. "It's an emergency!" I hear this all the time from students who forget their hall pass. This student had his hall pass though, so I told him to fill out the date, location and time and bring it up to me for a signature. 5 minutes later, I noticed that he hadn't come up yet. So I walk over to him.

"You didn't get your hall pass signed. Didn't you want to go to the bathroom?"

"No, I don't need to go anymore."

This line always cracks me up. When you think about it, it's a funny statement coming from someone who swore it was an emergency. It's not like the urge suddenly goes away or anything. I laughed, told him that saying that was scary and left.

It never occurred to me that there is one time when you don't need to go anymore. When you've already gone.

Since I was cruising the opposite side of the room for most of the period, I didn't notice the large puddle that had formed under the boy. And he never raised his hand or said anything else. Until 20 minutes later. At the end of the period. He'd been sitting in a pair of soggy pants waiting for the end of class. Ugh. Needless to say, I sent him to the office and I'll think twice when the student swears it's an emergency.

WASL fun

So we are taking the WASL )it's our excuse for a state standardized test) for the next two weeks and it's got its good and bad side. On the good side, I get three hours of proctoring a test that requires me to do next to nothing, so I get all my other work done. On the bad side, three hours of silence is too much for a middle school kid, and they go nuts the rest of the day.

The teachers have been sharing their humorous WASL stories. One teacher noticed a student covering his eyes and wandered over to see what he was doing. He covered his eyes, poked his pencil on the test booklet and bubbled whatever bubble was closest to his pencil. Yeah, that one's not going to pass.

A different teacher walked past a teacher and noticed that they were drawing all sorts of pictures in their booklet. The teacher told the student, "You can't draw in the booklet, you're supposed to be answering the questions!" The confused student replied, "But the book told me to read the story and draw a conclusion!"

I see London, I see France.....

As students bend over or crouch, I see a lot of underwear. Believe me, I don't want to! It's hard not to see it when someone's got a pair of droopy drawers.

Today, I saw an interesting pair of baby blue plaid underwear. To be honest, it looked like a pair I would wear because it's cute and trendy. Too bad it was a boy wearing it.... o.0