Yahweh is strong, Yahweh is right, Yahweh is mine tonight

Teaching social studies has been an interesting experience. Mind you, I failed almost every history course I took in college, so please don't ask me why that makes me a "highly qualified teacher" in this subject. The logic makes my brain hurt.

 This week, I stopped pretending the Diaspora Acrostic Poems I was supposed to grade were invisible and actually took a look at them. Thankfully, Ashley's poem saved me from crying, but not in the way you'd expect...

 Let me back up a bit and discuss why these poems might bring me to tears. The differences between Judaism and Christianity elude most middle-school students so I've tried to be very clear about how they're different. Jesus Christ does not figure prominently in Judaism. Drawing a Menorah or a dreidel or the Star of David to represent Judaism is fine. Crucifixes are not. To be fair, only one student ignored this and drew artful crosses all over his work. However, if I see one more Bible or Jesus-fish or Holy Grail, I'm going to scream.

 Ashley's poem provided some much-needed levity. The students had to include the four central beliefs of Judaism, including Monotheism (the belief in one God). Ashley's line about Monotheism was "All-powerful and all-knowing single God with Monotheism to prevent one person from having all the power." The spirit of Billy Mays stirred in my soul...and spoke: "All-Powerful Yahweh! Now with more Monotheism (tm)! Prevents stubborn stains to your history! Be sure to look for quality Yahweh products at your local fine retailer! Remember: it's Yahweh or the highway!"

 I need to learn not to grade at the brewery. Snarfing beer up my nose is too painful.

Wait a few minutes, I'll fart for you too.

It's time for the science fair. Trevor and Hector caught me on the way to the copy room after school, asking for a copy of the procedure-writing tips page.

As a middle school teacher, I've learned the fine art of when to be stern and when to be a goofball. Trevor and Hector's class had been particularly unruly the last couple of weeks, so I was more than a little tired of being Mrs. Grumptastic. And, as the two boys trailed behind me in the empty hall, I seized the opportunity. With skill honed during many a frat party, I relaxed my esophagus and released a long, reverberating belch that would have brought down the walls of Jericho itself.

The enthusiastic chatter behind me crumbled into shocked silence. After a few seconds, Trevor almost whispered, "Mrs. W, was that you?"

I shot Trevor a sly glance and responded, "Yeah."

His awestruck response: "That....was awesome!"

Why You Teach Speech

Welcome back to school! It's September: I hope you brought your supplies with you and do NOT ever ask me if you need a pencil for class today. I will bite you and, as Mrs. Skapinsken proved last year in her science classroom, the mouth of a teacher has more germs in it than a school toilet (no really, I'm serious: she proved this by growing bacterial cultures from swabs). Don't make me do something you'll regret.

The beginning of the school year usually involves a barrage of basic skills tests for the students. Math teachers test for basic skills such as multi-digit multiplication and long division, language arts teachers test for parts of speech and paragraph organization, that sort of thing. Things look promising this year from my point of view: most of my kids only took a couple of days to finish a 25 question basic math skills test and did fairly well. In comparison, many of my kids last year had problems calculating 14 - 8 and took 5 days to finish the same 25 question test. I wanted to stab myself in the eye repeatedly with a white board marker.

My team teacher, Dina came into my classroom giggling at break today. She'd given our kids a parts of speech test to see what they knew. Some of the parts of speech were pretty easy (noun, verb) and some were a little more difficult (like participle). To be fair, I don't even know what a participle is, and I wouldn't recognize a dangling participle if it fell off the sentence, or whatever it is they do.....

Here are some of the responses she shared with me:

Infinitive- "The number of nouns and verbs a sentence can have."
Verb- "A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y."
Preposition- "Another word for a bargain or deal."

I'm glad she's amused: it will help her next week when she feels like crying after reading their first essay.

Cockroach is to mother as hissing is to ______________.

It's that time of year again. I still hate the damned Madagascar hissing cockroaches, though I can at least touch them now. Of course, they had to prove me a liar this time around. The ones we got this year aren't as docile as the ones we got last year (the ones last year, you could throw rocks at them and they'd just sit there stupidly, staring at you. Kind of like 6th graders, actually....) but at least they hiss, which is cool and disconcerting at the same time. The curriculum tells us to tell the kids that they don't have any diseases and they don't bite. Supposed to make the kids feel more comfortable around them. Except.....Brady came up to me and showed me that his cockroach actually did bite him. Bastard drew blood too (that must have been one motherfucking pissed-off cockroach). So much for "they don't bite". If Brady comes down with some rare African sleeping sickness, I'm asking for my money back.

Anyways, we were discussing the hissing behavior in class today. "Why do you think the cockroach hisses? What was happening at that time?" I asked the kids.

Most of the kids could tell me that they were picking up the cockroach, or poking it with a pencil, or trying to shove food in its mandibles to try to get the thing to eat (They have no empathy, I tell you. They're bopping the poor bug on the head with a piece of banana and complaining that the thing won't eat. Maybe they'd eat if I threw a banana at their heads, but most of the world doesn't like being harassed with fruit), and that the cockroach probably hissed to scare them off. Then Devan raises his hand.

"So I think the cockroach is like my mom? Like, when I keep poking her, and she hisses at me to get me to stop?"

Mind you, if I poked my mom repeatedly and pissed her off, I'd probably wake up 5 feet away with a handprint on my cheek and my ears ringing so Devan's probably getting off easy. Might explain his lack of impulse control. But I suppose I should be grateful that he made a real-world connection.

I didn't teach him that....

We were studying Athenian democracy in social studies the other day. The book made the following statement: "Only free men could vote in an Athenian democracy."

"What does that mean, 'Only free men could vote'?" I asked the class.

Michael raised his hand. "Does that mean that married men weren't allowed to vote?"

Motivations

Motivation can often be hard for a teacher. Abstract concepts like letter grades often slip right past most students. They understand much more concrete motivators, like "If I don't see an A, B or C, you don't see your PS3 until I do". Thankfully, most parents come through wonderfully with concrete motivators to match our abstract ones. Occasionally, however, other motivators need to be found. Sometimes it's even the child that hopefully motivates the parent to do something.

Take, for example, this conversation I had today with Andrea:

"Andrea," I said, "you haven't done anything in the last 2 weeks. If you don't make up the work soon, you'll end up failing this trimester too and you might have to be a 6th grader again next year."

"I don't care. I'll just learn the same things again." Andrea continues to doodle in her notebook.

"You don't mind being a 6th grader again? But you won't be able to talk to any of your friends."

"I'll see them after school."

(long pause) "Once you get kept back, you usually don't get caught back up again. You probably won't even graduate high school with your friends. They'll be talking about jobs and cars and you'll still be stuck in school."

"Oh, I'm not graduating."

I'm confused now. "But what are you planning to do when you grow up? Most jobs want a high school diploma."

"I'm not going to do anything". Andrea continues to doodle.

(very long pause now. Apparently only one of us has thought this plan through to its logical conclusion) "You need food to eat and a place to live. You want a car? (Andrea nods) Well, that all takes money. How will you get what you want without a job to pay for it?"

"I'm going to live with my mom."

"Until when? 20? (Andrea nods) 30? (Andrea nods) 40? (Andrea nods) You know, your mom probably won't let you live with her when your 40. Most parents expect their children to move out when they're not going to school."

Andrea shakes her head. "No, my mom will let me live with her. She can pay for everything."

(very)

(long)

(pause)

................. and then I walked away.

No matter what Andrea says, I'm pretty sure mom won't be happy with Andrea's "mommie will support me" plan for life. And I sent her an e-mail detailing this conversation, just to be sure.

I have cool eyeliner

I was in Deanna's classroom today observing her class (she has several of my students and I like to see what goes on when I'm not teaching them) when one of her students gestured me to come over. Since it wasn't even one of my students, I was confused, but I went to see what she wanted. She waved her hand to indicate I should come closer so she could whisper something. I came closer and leaned over.

"I wish I could be in your class," she said. "You have cool eyeliner".

Eyeliner?

I double-checked to make sure that was what she said. She waved a finger back and forth over her eyelids. Yep, she said I had cool eyeliner. Now thankfully, I was wearing eyeliner today, or else I would be completely baffled. Instead of only confounded.

Whiteheads, color of

Dylan the Girl (not to be confused with Dylan the Boy, who is in the same class) came up to me during class and asked me to look at a couple of small white bumps on her face.

"What are these?"  She asked me worriedly.

I looked at the dots but they didn't seem terribly disturbing to me.  In fact, they looked a little like zits.  "I'm not sure, are they hard to the touch and a little painful?"

"Yes!" she replied.

"I'm guessing they're probably whiteheads, Dylan.  People get them all the time."

She looked confused.  "Whiteheads?"

"Yeah, you know.  Zits?"

Sudden understanding dawned on her face.  "Wait, whiteheads are white?"

Now it was my turn to be confused.  "Yeah.  Just like blackheads are black."

Dylan stared at me for several seconds, then with a chagrined "Oh duh, I get it," she grinned at me and returned to her seat.

We need less "pickle tickle" in our schools.

I was out in front of the school today, looking for a student who'd left his homework on his desk (again), when I noticed a couple of girls goofing around.  They had invented a game called "Break the Pickle" where you take pencils and sticks and other long, cylindrical objects of varying diameters, and try to break them over your knee on the very first try.  If you fail to break the "pickle", the other person gets to grab the object out of your hand and chase you while poking you with it.

One of the girls failed to break the pencil she was using.  The other girl grabbed it out of her hand and started poking her with the eraser in the belly and the ribs.  Both laughing, the first girl took off running, screaming "NO PICKLE TICKLE!  NO PICKLE TICKLE!" with the second girl in giggling, poking close pursuit.

I about pulled a muscle trying not to die laughing, yet no one else seemed to see anything amiss (several parents and the vice principal were about 10 feet away, and none of them batted an eye at this spectacle).  Apparently, Washingtonians have not been acquainted with the phrase "pickle tickle" before.  It must be a midwest thing.  For those of you who don't get the joke, "pickle tickle" is a rather colorful term for "bumping uglies" aka "playing hide the salami" aka "having sex".  

Kids say the darndest things.....

We were discussing today what you would bring with you to keep you occupied if you were stuck in a submarine for a month (as some of our soldiers...er, sailors may be).  One student mentioned taking pictures or something to decorate the walls.

I replied, "Nice thinking!  It's going to get boring staring at the same grey walls after a while."

"Well, what if we look out the windows?" someone asked.

That stopped me for a second.  "Windows?  There's no windows in a submarine."

"What about the windshield?"

"There's no windshield in a submarine either."

"How do they see where they're driving?"

We had a mini-lesson on SONAR, since many of the students believed that sailors drove submarines around while peering out of the periscope.  I'm waiting for when they ask what submarines use for turn signals.