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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.