Jedi Masters

I bought a new toy recently. Yes, I am aware that I am 41 years old. But when you find the Yoda Jedi Trainer on sale, you don't pass up that opportunity for chaos and anarchy in your classroom. Here's what it looks like in action:

Well, not in action exactly, but you get the point.  It talks, spins, and hits you with the lightsaber.  Epic.

Today was a professional development meeting. In order to amuse myself during long meetings, I like to bring props. So of course, Jedi Master Yoda had to join our table in the gym. I did not realize, however, that the middle school teachers were only spending a few minutes in the gym before heading off to a meeting in the computer lab for the rest of the morning. I didn't have enough hands to carry Yoda and my coffee, so I figured that Yoda could stand guard over our table while we were gone. 

You would think I would learn. TRUST NO ONE! 

When I came back to the gym after the morning meeting, Yoda was nowhere to be seen.  In a blind panic, I shrieked, "Where's Master Yoda?" like a little girl. 

Silence.

Then one of the kindergarten teachers, who had stayed behind in the gym for the morning meeting, drawled, "Can't you use the Force to find him?"

I may have asked for that. So I changed tactics and started looking around the gym. How hard can it be to find an 18" green guy with a lightsaber? 

Friends, I have been SCHOOLED!

I Am Officially Old

If you have ever met seventh graders, you will know that they are easily distracted.  Especially by clip art in presentations.  I have apparently not learned this lesson in my eighteen years of teaching them because today's PowerPoint contained not only clip art, but MOVING clip art!  What on earth could I have been thinking?

Rather than writing down what they were supposed to be writing down, students wanted to know important details such as, "How did you get the clip art to move?"

"Magic," I replied with a wave of my hand.  "Duh."

Then they wanted to know why the cartoon characters did not appear to have a waist.  And what the cartoon character was writing.  And why they couldn't read the writing.  And so on and so forth until I was about ready to delete all remnants of clip art so we could continue with the actual lesson.

On the final slide, I made an even bigger mistake.  The example sentence used to demonstrate relative pronouns and relative clauses was, "The person who called me last night is my teacher."  I very cleverly thought that a phone would be an appropriate piece of clip art to illustrate this slide.  It didn't even have any motion--it was just a phone.  Here's what the phone looked like:

Anyone else see where this is going?

"Why are there no numbers on that clock?"

BECAUSE IT'S NOT A CLOCK!  BACK WHEN DINOSAURS ROAMED THE EARTH WHEN I WAS A GIRL, THIS WAS THE ONLY PHONE WE HAD!  AND IT HAD A CORD AND WAS WIRED TO THE WALL!  GET OFF MY LAWN!


*deep cleansing breaths*

You May Address Me As "Your Worshipfulness"

Two posts in one day?  DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER, MASS HYSTERIA!  When you're on, you're on.  What can I say?

Background: Today my colleague and I had a release day to complete the mass amounts of grading that comes along with interim tests and performance tasks.  Before we locked ourselves far away from the children, a parent came in and gave me a My Little Pony tiara.  Like you do.  Of course, I was now mandated to wear said tiara for the rest of the day.  Like you do.  It was strangely comfortable, perhaps a sign that I am secretly royal and my real parents will show up soon to allow me to claim my birthright.

Or not.

Moving on with the story... our principal finds us a little later that morning and asks if we would be willing to do her a favor if she bought us lunch.  Of course, we were all on board with that.  Turns out that the librarian was out sick and they needed someone to cover the library specials time for the Young Fives class.  Would we be willing to help?

Of course!  What could possibly go wrong with this plan?  Two middle school teachers with a penchant for sloths in charge of the younglings?  Bring it on!

I went down to the Young Fives classroom to find out what the plan is.  When I walked in the door, every child gasped in delight.  One little girl squealed, "ARE YOU THE QUEEN?"

I had forgotten the tiara.  Apparently tiaras cause mass hysteria in the primary hall; in my own hallway, I just explain that it's Tiara Tuesday and people nod their heads and move along.

"Why, yes!"  I announced grandly.  "I am the Queen of the Library today, and I look forward to seeing you later this morning!"  Then I had to fight off a rush of small children who all wanted to touch the royal tiara.  As I tried to fend them off, a little girl whispers, "I hope you wear your fancy dress to the library!"

Great.  I can't disappoint the children.  So I stopped in my room before we headed to the library and picked up the gold lame´cape that I just so happen to keep in my closet (what, like you don't?) and felt this would suffice.  The first twenty minutes of our library time went swimmingly.  But soon I could sense the small ones were growing antsy.  We raided my closet once more and found my box of random dress-up items, which provided the chance for complete chaos and anarchy as well as general hilarity.  When our principal stopped in to check on us, we were running around the library wearing wigs, boas, and glasses.  We had a BLAST.  I just hope that the teacher can forgive us someday for riling the kids up.  At least they had lunch right afterwards.

At the end of the day, a small child yelled, "Goodbye, Queen!" as she walked out of the building.  I think my work here is done.

#spellingisawesome

I know it's been a long time.  Sometimes things just aren't that funny, and it's been like that for a while.  Or maybe something was funny, but not blogworthy.  Yes, that's a quality of humor.  But finally, here's an incident that wasn't truly overheard or in my classroom yet still blogworthy...

It will probably surprise none of you that I like to tease seventh graders impart words of wisdom to seventh graders at all hours of the day.  I have an Instagram account for this express purpose.  It amazes the children that I am aware of social media and even participate in it on occasion; also, they are mortified by my use of hashtags, which of course makes me use more of them.  I was teasing some seventh grade girls having a deep, philosophical conversation with some seventh grade girls regarding the importance of spelling last night.  Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a transcript of said conversation:

#winning  #dontmesswiththemaster  #schooled  #usingmysocialmediapresenceforgood

Paging Mr. Skywalker...

A few weeks ago, one of the middle school teachers (we'll call him Mr. Skywalker) left our school because he got a job much closer to home.  Of course the kids were upset, but I thought things had started to calm down.  Today's installment proves that it's NEVER over in middle school.

Student:  You know that inflatable unicorn head on your wall behind you?

Me:  WHAT?  THERE'S A UNICORN HEAD ON MY WALL?  NO!

*puzzled silence from student*

Me:  Sigh.  Yes, I am aware of the unicorn head on my wall.

Student:  Well, you should get one like that of Mr. Skywalker.  And he should be wearing that red hat.


1.  No unicorns were harmed in the writing of this blog.

2.  It's a fez.  The unicorn wears the fez usually.  Mr. Skywalker would occasionally steal it from the unicorn and wear it for Hat Day or Fanatic Day.  Or Tuesday.

3.  I have no plans to decapitate Mr. Skywalker in order to hang his head on my wall.  Quite frankly, that would be creepy.

An Act of War

Sometimes things don't turn out as you plan.  I decided to try an anticipatory activity with my classes today to get them to predict what our next story would be about.  Honestly, I thought it would be pretty easy to figure out.  I had them perform some simple tasks using their non-dominant hands.  Then we talked about how they felt while doing the tasks--frustrated, stupid, slow, etc.  The point of this was to get them to predict that the next story was going to involve characters who had issues with their dominant hands (one in a car accident, one in the war in Vietnam) and had to learn to compensate.

The predicting part did not go so well.  When I asked the class why they thought I had made them do this activity, they immediately responded that I was trying to get them to write more neatly.  While that is indeed true for some of them, I noted that we do have other things that we do in ELA other than writing.  Maybe they could make a prediction about something having to do with another topic we are learning about, such as characterization or point of view?

After more discussion, the class finally determined that the activity had something to do with a story we were going to read.  Then a student made a prediction that it might have something to do with veterans since today is Veteran's Day.  I was very excited-YES!  It DOES have something to do with a veteran!  What might that connection be?  WHY WOULD I HAVE MADE EVERYONE WRITE THEIR NAME AND DRAW A TREE USING THEIR NON-DOMINANT HAND?  HOW MIGHT THAT CONNECT TO THE STORY?

And then...a student raises her hand.  Surely we'd gotten to the whole point of the exercise, that one of the characters was a veteran who had injured his hand.  She says, "I may be a little off base with this, but I think it means you are going to send us to war."


If memory serves, I think I need Congress's approval for that.

Patience, Young Grasshopper...

Last week was interim test week at school.  This means that all language arts and math classes have big big tests and we teachers get the pleasure of grading the constructed responses before scanning the rest of the test in to the gradebook.  One of my former students was a little anxious about finding out his score on his math test, and he stopped his math teacher on her way out the door...

Student: Are you going to have the interims graded by tomorrow?

Math Teacher: Possibly.  It depends upon how long it takes.

Student: Oh, you can pull an all-nighter to get them all done!

Me:  Whoa there chief...it's not quite that easy! [Student's current ELA teacher walks by and I called her into the room]  Tell your ELA teacher what you just said!

Student:  I just want to know what my grades are!  It's important!  Are you going to have our interims graded by tomorrow?

ELA Teacher:  Well, actually, I have no life whatsoever.  So I am just going to go straight home to grade this giant stack of papers.  I will not eat or sleep until I am finished so you can have your grade tomorrow.

Student:  Finally!  Someone who appreciates my priorities!

We're going to need to work on the concept of facetiousness, apparently.