Oh, Jo.....

 Last week in Creative Writing we watched Little Women.  The kids were testing in ELA class and I didn't want their brains to explode I wanted them to be fresh for testing.  So, movie days.  

I was pleased that the kids were outraged at the sexism shown towards the little women throughout the film.  There was general outrage when Jo was offered only a small amount of money for her stories, as well as the general push for women to stay home and get married.  But the highlight of the movie occurred towards the end when (spoiler alert) Jo turns down Laurie's marriage proposal and then changes her mind only to discover he has married her sister.  Jo then goes up to her room and begins burning her writing page by page.  One of the students gasped and then blurted out, "Really?  All because of a boy?"

My work here is done.

I'm Not A Math Teacher, But....

 Driveline leads to all sorts of bizarro conversations with students.  Usually I don't remember what led up to the moment, only the moment itself.  For example, last week we were talking about drawing shapes for some reason.  Or maybe it was something totally unrelated--I honestly don't remember.  All I know is that a student piped up with, "I know how to draw a circle.  Some circles have corners."

Pretty sure that's not true.

What Happens During Driveline...

We usually have around half an hour extra with our last block classes as we wait for kids to get picked up.  There's an eighth grader, who shall remain nameless, who often stops in my class on his way out the door and asks for candy.  I tell my seventh graders that I give him candy so he'll go away, but really I give him candy because he was virtual all last year and made us all laugh anyway.  Yesterday I found a gummy hotdog candy that I had bought a while ago and I wasn't sure how good it would be.  But I figured Candy Boy would appreciate it for its sheer bizarreness factor and would probably eat it anyway.  

As time passed, Candy Boy had yet to make his appearance.  I asked one of my students to go find him and have him come to the room because I had something for him.  The kid says, "What is it, a stun gun?"  I love that my students think that would be a legit thing I would have laying around.

Spoiler alert: Turned out Candy Boy had already left the building, so gummy hotdog will have to wait.

Keeping with the candy theme, a different student was eating Sour Patch Kids, which is cool since technically it's after school and if the kids are eating, they make less noise.  She very kindly gave me some, which was very nice of her.  She then was trying to put the rest of the bag in her backpack and was having problems finding room.  I offered to keep the bag for her, but she refused because she said she knew I would eat them all.  Another student asked, "Isn't eating Sour Patch Kids like bringing home extra kids?  You don't want that."

I replied, "No, I would eat them before I got in the car.  It's all good."

Then she said, "Isn't that cannibalism?"

Then their parents arrived, thankfully.

Clever Girl...

 I posted this meme on my social media platforms because it's true.

This sparked a series of...dare I say, threats from coworkers regarding MY parking space.  Coworkers who said they were going to park in MY spot.  One particular coworker, who we'll call Ms. Jym, even used a series of GIFs to try to intimidate me.

When Ms. Jym walked in to school the next morning, I was obligated to point out that she had not arrived early enough to park in MY spot.  Of course, this led to a series of verbal challenges and gloves coming off and all sorts of nonsense.  When I offered to settle the matter right then and there, she said, "I don't want to fight you.  You're like a T-Rex and I'm more like a velociraptor.  So if you catch me, I'm toast.  But I'm gonna nibble on you the whole time."

To be clear, there was no actual fighting in the hallway.  We actually kinda like each other.

Oh Magic Eight Ball....Reveal Your Secrets!

 I have a magic eight ball on my desk for reasons.  Mostly so I can watch the students try to figure out how it works--it's always good for a few laughs.  One of my classes was SUPER into it today though.  I realized that the boys were asking the eight ball questions about their love lives (or lack thereof).  One young squire came up and gave the eight ball a shake (thankfully he didn't ask his question out loud, because I don't want to know any details in this realm).  He must not have liked the response given because he put it back down on my desk, saying, "This is stupid.  The eight ball doesn't work."

A girl sitting near my desk overheard him and commented, "The eight ball only tells the truth.  Don't ask the eight ball questions if you can't handle the truth."

I felt like I was in an Aaron Sorkin movie.

Guess Who's Back...Back Again...

 It's been a long time.  *shakes fist at the virus*

But maybe now we need to get back to normal.  And normal is often funny when you teach seventh grade.

One of my jobs is to hold the wing door open in the morning so that the middle school kids can enter the building without cramming through the front door.  It's not bad right now, though I know it will be far less enjoyable once it rains or snows or is cold.  Which I'm sure won't happen in Michigan anytime soon.

Anyways, some of the eighth graders help to open car doors for the little kids during morning drop-off.  They have found that one way to amuse themselves while they work is to give directions to their eighth-grade friends.  Like, "So you're going to turn left and go through the door, then walk all the way down the hall until you see the nice lady teaching math."  Hysterical.  I'm certain their friends are appreciative.

Last week, one of my former students was playing this game with one of his friends.  As he saw me, he said, "Be careful--you don't want to look her directly in the eyes."  Apparently I traumatized the children more than I'd anticipated last year.

Today, a current student approached me and gave me a Mandalorian mask.  For reals!  Ah. Mazing.  So of course I put it on.  And of course I pointed into the hallway as students walked in, saying, "This is the way."  Which is REALLY funny, if you're a Star Wars fan.  Disappointingly, most kids didn't even flinch--even the sixth-graders who are unfamiliar with my randomness.  I mean, it's not every day that Mando welcomes you to middle school. 

So I guess the virus isn't ALL bad....oh wait.  Yes it is, but it was still funny.  And there's a lot more days left in the year.

Turn To Page 364

The back of my classroom is my own private domain.  I have my laptop, my desk, my toys. . . and piles of paper, if I’m being brutally honest.  On the first day of school, I impress upon the children that one does not simply enter my lair.  One must be invited. I understand the appeal—I have a lot of cool stuff.  I wouldn’t leave my lair at all if I didn’t have to, you know, teach my classes.

Today a student, clearly attracted by a shiny object of some sort, wandered into my lair while we were waiting for dismissal.  I could see that she wasn’t hurting anything, so I let her look at whatever she was looking at.  Another student saw her, gasped, and shouted, “GET OUT OF HER DUNGEON!”  

Apparently I am the potions professor at Hogwarts.

Iceberg! Dead Ahead!

This week my classes have been reading an excerpt from Exploring the Titanic by Robert Ballard.  At this point we are far enough removed from the James Cameron movie Titanic that I only have occasional questions about why Jack didn't get on the raft at the end and other historical discrepancies.  Praise be.

We spend some quality time discussing how the ship was constructed, being as that's hugely relevant to why it sank so quickly.  I put my incredible artistic skills to good use by sketching the ship complete with watertight compartments and four funnels.  When the ship grazed the iceberg, it popped off the rivets in five of the front compartments, which basically doomed the ship.  I cleverly indicated where the gash was with my red marker... I'm always thinking.  Once the front compartments filled with water and the bow began to sink, it was only a matter of time before the water overflowed into the next compartment, and so on.  History comes alive in my drawing. 

Because my drawing was so incredible, I didn't erase it before the end of class.  We packed up and headed out to the curb for pick-up.  When I returned to my room, I noticed that someone had added what is perhaps the biggest understatement in all of recorded maritime history:

You're not wrong, kid.

In Which I Survive to Teach Another Day...

First day of school blog post!  Always a good omen.

I was playing every teachers' favorite game today, that being "Taking Roll and Mispronouncing Names."  Best.  Game.  Ever.   I came to a child who we shall call William. 

"William,"  said I, "what would you like me to call you?"

Can you see where I went wrong?  What I meant was, would you like to be Will or William?  Totally legitimate question.  But, in fairness, that is not the question I asked.

Without even the slightest hesitation, William answered, "Danny DeVito."

And now I have Danny DeVito in my second block class.  FOR THE WIN.

It's the End of the Year As We Know It....

The bad thing about having a student teacher is that far fewer amusing things happen when you aren't teaching.  Sorry 'bout that.

Buuuut now I'm back, and the last weeks of school are always good blog post fodder.  After a full year of harassing seventh graders  training young minds, I have molded at least two of the children in my own image.  Consider:

1.  A child was walking down the hall at the end of the day with cupcakes.  I demanded to know why I had not also been given cupcakes.  Without missing a beat, he replied, "Cupcakes are for winners."  The same child brought in a container of cake sprinkles the next day to torment me, shaking it at random intervals to remind me that indeed, only winners have sprinkles (see Sprinkles Are For Winners! for more details). 

2.  I was tormenting my last block class by eating pretzel sticks in front of them, as one does.  I started to feel a little badly about it, so I gave each kid two pretzel sticks.  The small ones.  Upon receiving his magnanimous gift, a student told me, "I like two more things about you now than I did before."

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  Go forth and spread chaos, younglings!

Watch Out For That First Step...

It's been a busy week, but there were some doozies!

1.  We're reading about the Titanic disaster.  The selection in our textbook was written by Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the wreck.  I told the kids about how nowadays he is exploring the deep trenches of the ocean.  It takes him hours to go down the trench in the submarine and hours to go back up.  A student asked, "How does he hold his breath that long?"

2.  I have no idea how the topic came up, but someone made a comment about how old I am.  I immediately notified the students that I am not the oldest seventh grade teacher; my arch-nemesis co-worker is.  By six months.  But it still counts.  A girl in the back looked at me up and down and said, "Well, clearly she moisturizes." 

3.  A student managed to stick a pencil eraser to his forehead and approached me saying, "Look!  I'm a unicorn!"

For reals.

Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends...

Day One:  CRUSHED IT! 

You know it's gonna be a good year when you get a blog post on the first day of school, right?  So I do actually teach a lesson on the first day--because I am the meanest teacher on Carpenter Road.  Plus I have 90 minutes to fill.  The first lesson is always about how to write a personal letter.  Then they have to write a personal letter to me to introduce themselves.  Genius, right?

Writing this letter isn't all that complicated.  There's really only 3 formatting issues to be dealt with.  In order to explain where the various components should be placed on notebook paper, I draw a piece of paper on my whiteboard so it looks something like:

Only mine doesn't look this good, because let's face it...I'm an ELA teacher, not an art teacher.

The point I was attempting to make is that when we write, we justify our words to the left margin.  I'm nothing if all about academic vocabulary, even on the first day.  I was trying to get the kids to come up with the name of the red line running down the left side of the page, which initially got me responses of, "It's a line!" and "It's a red line!"  

Highly technical terms.  

I said, "It begins with an M."

And a student in the front blurts out, "Oh!  I know!  Mississippi!"

*crickets*

*hysterical laughter as I bang my head against the wall*

I need to go back and review exactly when I began being a geography teacher, apparently.

Sprinkles Are For Winners!

So there was some fierce dodgeball action in the middle school last week.  Each class had a team, and then one team per grade level progressed to the finals.  Much to my surprise and delight, my homeroom won!  They then went on to beat the 8th grade team in the semis that afternoon.  I discovered that there are some VERY competitive people in my class, and there's one kid who attacks like a spider monkey. 

This meant that my homeroom was going to play the staff team in the finals.  Meaning I was a winner either way at this point.  Despite my getting hit within 30 seconds of the start, the staff team hung on and emerged victorious.  There were some allegations of cheating, but come on--we're much bigger targets than the kids.  We deserved some accommodations.

I decided to buy my homeroom doughnuts the next day to show that a) there were no hard feelings, and b) that they rocked.  My teammate was appalled, reminding me that SPRINKLES ARE FOR WINNERS!  And so my evil plan was hatched...I would buy sprinkle doughnuts for all the teachers, which we would eat defiantly in front of the children.  When they complained, we would explain that SPRINKLES ARE FOR WINNERS and they did not win.  After some teasing, I would bring out the doughnuts I bought for them--which were glazed, but not sprinkled.  BECAUSE SPRINKLES ARE FOR WINNERS.

The plan unfolded beautifully.  The children were amusingly outraged when they saw us eating doughnuts in the hall.  They demanded doughnuts for themselves.  I told them that SPRINKLES ARE FOR WINNERS.  They accused us of cheating and reminded me that our moral focus virtue for the month was integrity.  I responded that I was amazed that anyone would choose me to teach moral focus values.  And ate my sprinkles.  Then I gave them their doughnuts, which made them happy.  When someone commented on the lack of sprinkles, I pointed out that I had actually compromised my values by providing them with glazed doughnuts versus plain ones and perhaps they should be thankful for what they had.

One child in particular was obsessed by the sprinkles.  Let's be clear--they weren't even the good rainbow sprinkles.  They were yellow and orange Halloween sprinkles, for reasons that Tim Hortons ought to explain.  Personally, I don't even LIKE sprinkles.  They are crunchy, and doughnuts ought not to be crunchy.  Unless they are Cap'n Crunch doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts.  Then it's all good.  Anyways, this kid wanted sprinkles so badly that I gave him one that had fallen off.  You would have thought that it was a billion dollar sprinkle, he was so happy.

The day after Doughnut-Gate, there were still sprinkles on my floor.  Apparently it is hard to vacuum sprinkles up?  Who knows.  But this same kid went bonkers.  He picked them up off the floor before I could say anything AND ATE THEM.  He then proclaimed, "It's my lucky day!  It's like dinner!"  I didn't tell him that there were sprinkles on the floor in the hall from where my fellow WINNERS and I had been eating doughnuts the day before.  For obvious reasons.

Those Authors, Sheesh.

The powers that be have given me a student teacher again.  THE FOOLS!  THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO!  Because I am apparently genetically incapable of allowing her to deal with behavior issues, I try to peace out for part of the time when she is teaching.  This way she can learn how to give the death glare and the universal "zip-it" sign instead of me launching myself across the room to handle it for her.  Instead, I wander the halls, causing chaos and anarchy wherever I go.  For example, today I riled up the kindergarteners in gym class.  At one point there were about ten of them launching dodgeballs at me, screaming, "GET HER!!!!!" 

But I digress.

Having a student teacher also gives me the freedom to lurk in the back of my room and listen in.  We just started the infamous poetry unit, so "The Highwayman" was the poem of the day.  It's usually a popular selection due to the combination of hot pirate-like criminals wearing leather pants and fun words to use in 7th grade like "breast," "butt," and "hell".  Plus everyone dies in the end (spoiler alert). 

The last class of the day totally latched on to the connection to Romeo and Juliet, which we'd studied earlier.  Once they realized that Bess the landlord's daughter died to save her love, but he dies anyway, they went crazy.  One gentleman sitting in the back by me had some particularly scathing commentary:

"Why do all the good characters have to die at the end?  Especially when they are hot girls?  Man, authors SUCK!"

#truth, people.

In Which Something Weird Happens in Reading Class

Sometimes getting kids to read is simply a matter of finding the right book.  I usually have one or two students who make miraculous strides in this area each year, but there are a lot more than normal this year.  A LOT.  Like, ten so far.  And we're only one-third of the way through the year.

The point of this is not to make myself sound like some amazing teacher.  I really didn't DO anything other than read a bunch of books and then pass them on to kids.  Sometimes I get lucky and something clicks.

But what happened today was unprecedented in all of human history.  Or at least in seventh grade history.  Some background...

I teach an elective class called Battle of the Books.  Students in the class read books that I have selected for them, take the Accelerated Reader tests over them, and earn points for their team.  Winning team gets a fabulous prize at the end of the trimester.  Trimester One just finished, and the class was split between kids who wanted to read every day all the time and kids who would rather eat bees than read a book.  Kinda challenging. 

One of the latter type of students barely read anything throughout the whole last trimester.  Today during first block, my partner-in-crime teaching colleague extraordinaire told me that she had to take away a book from him during math because he wouldn't stop reading.

"What?  No you didn't!" was my immediate response.

"Oh yes I did!"

"SHUUUUT. UUUUP."

DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER!  WHAT IS HAPPENING?

So the students comes to my class before lunch.  With his book.  He wants to know if it is an AR book because he couldn't find it when he looked it up.  So I of course literally dropped everything to look it up.  Turned out it WAS an AR book (books with subtitles are often difficult to find in the system).  When I told him that it was worth 5 AR points, his eyes lit up.  "What?!"  he exclaimed.  "I have two more of these books!  And I love them!  That's gonna be, like, fifteen points!"

So third block rolls around at the end of the day and of course he's reading his book.  Almost done with it, by the way.  And then I notice something EVEN WEIRDER...two OTHER boys who would never have been caught dead reading a book last week WERE READING BOOKS!  I had to stop class to ask them what alien had switched their brains--but I wasn't mad at the alien because it was SO FREAKING AMAZING. 

And, I'm not gonna lie, it was QUIET.  Instead of causing chaos, kids wanted nothing more than to sit down with their respective noses in their respective books.  Even some of the other students noticed how different it was.  One of them said to me at the end of class, "It's like books are the new fidget spinners or something....look how focused they are!"

Ah friend...I hope with every fibre of my being that your words are true.  Because then my work here will be done.  At least for an hour or so.

On Top of Spagheeeeeetttttiiii...

In seventh grade, we have ten vocabulary words each week.  I start off the unit by going through the words to make sure everyone understands the definitions and pronunciations.  One of the words this week was "exploit", as in to take advantage of.  Seventh graders are reeeeeaaaalllyyyy good at exploiting things, if you didn't know.  As we discussed the definition, I mentioned that some of them had "exploited" the substitute teacher who had been in the classroom the day before.  We talked about how "exploitation" is deliberate--you are going out of your way to do it, and you are aware that what you are doing is probably ethically questionable.  One student referred back to a story I had shared earlier in the year about how I as a young child "exploited" my even-younger brother by telling him swear words to repeat to my mom, thereby earning him a spanking.  I agreed that indeed, I had definitely "exploited" my brother's youth and naiveté--I knew that he would get into trouble, and I wanted it to happen because I was jealous of him.

I also reminded the students that I had been known to "exploit" seventh-graders as well.  For example, a few of the teachers at a different school I used to work at teamed up once to convince the students that we were at war with Canada.  We also told them that spaghetti grew on trees.  Classic example of "exploiting" gullibility based on the classic 1957 April Fools joke concocted by the BBC:

My current students laughed and laughed....no way would THEY be so stupid as to allow me to "exploit" them in such a fashion!

Then a student asked how noodles were ACTUALLY made.  Another student immediately piped up that he made noodles at home with his family and that they were made from flour.  I confirmed this detail.  The first student looked puzzled, so I clarified that noodles were made from eggs and flour and water.  He said, "OH!  I thought you meant that they were made from FLOWERS!  This makes MUCH more sense!"

Homophones FTW.

Immature? Moi?

Did I not promise more posts?

Technically I did not actually overhear this, but it's too funny to not relate.

Today in math class, students were working in groups to come up with ideas that will be included on our 7th grade social contract.  For those of you not in the know, the social contract is a document that details how we will treat each other.  Once all ideas are discussed and voted upon, everyone (including the teachers) will sign it.  This helps us all to be held accountable for our words and actions.

Usually we encourage the students to include words with broad implications in a variety of situations, such as "respect."  Then we talk about what respect looks like and sounds like, to ensure that everyone understands how we define it.

Apparently a group of students were discussing the word "maturely."  This is a word that commonly comes up on the social contract.  One of the students complained, and I am paraphrasing, "Why do we have to act maturely?  Ms. Whiston doesn't."

Frankly, I am somewhat surprised that no one has brought up this point before.

Technically, He's Not Wrong...

It's only the second day of the school year, but I am already getting the feeling that I might be posting more often this year!

As a get-to-know-you/following directions activity, the students have to create a vanity plate that represents themselves.  You know, they look like this:

But because I am a MASTER TEACHER (ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha), I don't just say create a personalized license plate.  I try to get them to figure out what a vanity plate is by using some logical deduction.  They can usually figure out that I am talking about license plates rather than dinner plates, but it's more difficult to get to the definition of vanity.  One student pointed out that a vanity is a piece of furniture.  I agreed with them and asked them to describe a vanity.  The class was able to put together that a vanity is a low dresser with a spot where you can pull up a chair.  And there's a big mirror.

"So why do we call this furniture a 'vanity?'" I asked.  

Blank stares.

"What does 'vanity' mean?"

More blank stares.

"Okay... let's think.  It's called a 'vanity' because of the activity that occurs at it.  Would men or women be more likely to sit down at a vanity?"

Everyone was in instant agreement that women would be more likely to sit there.

"Why?  What might women be doing at the vanity?  Remember, there's a huge mirror on it," I prompted.

A boy in the middle of the room raises his hand and answers, "Taking selfies?"

HEY YOU GUUUUUUUUYS!

Probably to no one's surprise, I have a large collection of random magnets stuck to various metal surfaces in my classroom.  One of them looks like this:

This movie represents my entire childhood.  I must have seen it five times in the theatre.  But the youth of today have not necessarily been educated in Goonie.  Which is a sad state of affairs.

A kid was looking at the magnets the other day and asked if this was something famous.  I replied in the affirmative.  He then said, "Oh, I thought that kid was you when you were younger."

Um, thanks?

At least they didn't ask me to do the Truffle Shuffle.

When You're a Jet, You Stay a Jet!

We've been studying Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet for the past two weeks.  Luckily, one of my curricular objectives demands that we compare and contrast the text to a filmed version.  DONE!  I show a few clips from the 1997 Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo, Gnomeo and Juliet (this made an appearance in the blog last year), and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare--Abridged!  

Today was a half day, and I only had about thirty minutes with one of my classes.  I decided I would show them some of West Side Story.  I used to show the entire movie because I feel it is my duty as a teacher to expose my students to the wonder of musical theater, plus then I can sing the songs at the kids all day and it gives me great pleasure.  Strangely, the students are usually bored and/or annoyed with the film (and possibly my singing), so I have backed off and now only show a few scenes.  Today's group, however, would have happily watched the entire thing.  I started off with the opening dance battle scene.  Usually the kids complain about how lame it is.  This group immediately sorted themselves into rival gangs based on shirt color.  We didn't have time to watch much more other than the scene at the dance, but it certainly made an impression.  As they walked out to their lockers, there was a great deal of snapping as well as some jazz hands.  No, I am not joking.

A parent has already reported that the snapping continued at home as well.  Apparently I need to teach an elective on classical musical films.