exchange of the day

Student: "Ms B, I woke up a Christian today! I can't do work!"

Me: "Um... why?"

Student: "Christians don't curse!"

student responses

i would like to share this response with my readers (little though they may be, i hope itmakes you laugh, like it made me laugh when i read it)

we had been going over our rules in order to reinforce them, because a lot of the kids had forgotten about them (or choosing to ignore them, either way they were crazy). in response to this question:

"do you think these rules and expectations are fair?"

one of my students writes this:

"yes but no because everything is not fair but somethings are"

onomotopaiea.... or something like that

i'm currently doing a poetry unit with my kids and we're looking at figurative language right now. today, among others, we were talking about onomotopaiea (spelling?).

for those of you who do not remember (it's ok, these things happen) it is when the word sounds like the noise it describes. an example: boom. crack. zip. etc.

so we were going over it and i was having my kids come up with their own examples, which i could tell they didn't fully get (some examples of words put down: fireworks, gun shot, etc) so i stop and i ask the class, what noise does a bee make??

and the entire class goes "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

and then i go, how would you spell that? and the kids kinda look at me, and i supply, "how about b-u-z-z" now say the word that we just spelt and the kids all go "bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

we then repeat with dogs (we had roof, arff, and woof going on, so it took us awhile)

by the end of the period my class sounded like quite a zoo.

however, my kids got it!

i'm thinking about having my do now (the first five minutes of class time) be a sound do now, we could continue the zoo! chickens, cats, etc. we'll see.

two things

ok, the first thing did NOT happen in my class, but it's too funny/crazy to not tell.

first period (right after breakfast), the 9th graders are in science. a baby mouse is seen. every student is up on the tables, screaming ( i could hear this down the hall haha). then one student decides he's going to throw a book at the mouse. he literally hits it dead on, and mouse guts splatter out. that is too much for two students in the class, one of whom vomits on the floor, the other one makes it to the trashcan. the custodian had to come in and clean it up and disenfect it and the science book that did the damage was thrown away.

you know, a normal day.

the other thing:

i just got back from a boxing class. OMG. OMG. OMG. i can barely move.

my love life

my girls were talking about it yesterday.... not just one period, more than one period yesterday.

one of my students "ms b needs a nice mexican"

then later on "a mexican with nice wavy, long hair and blue eyes"

there was an argument over the blue eyes though...some of my girls said blue eyes were ugly. (hope they don't look at my eyes too closely!)

then it was discussed if i would ever date more than one person at once (the consensus was no),

and if i would want to date one of my students (many) brothers. She ultimately informed the class via blackboard that i was actually dating one of her brothers, at which point the entire class started railing on the one student that i couldn't do that because i would be showing favoritism and she finally said, "Ok she's not dating him, i just said that"

so an interesting friday over all.

first day back

so today was good and bad.

it was my first day back after my long weekend. i came back to find out that my students accomplished next to nothing yesterday and my best student was thrown out of the classroom by the sub. so.

my kids were all sorts of off today.

3rd period was good today, 7th period was not.

i ended up getting locked out of my classroom by one of my oh so lovely students.

they knew they had gone too far though when i got back in (it was literally about ten seconds when i had to tell students to let me in) because they were silent. completely silent.

i felt like i was breathing fire i was so angry.

but my kids said they were happy to see me this morning and 3rd period was good. a topsy turvey day overall.

not related to teaching, but....

I HATE MISSOURI DRIVERS!

literally every morning and every afternoon i say this (or possibly yell) in my car. i've gotten cut off more times on the highway, had to swerve because someone was drifting in my lane, gotten behind people going 55 in the fast line (OK, OK, it's the speed limit, but everyone knows that the left-most lane is for people who are going faster, i'll admit, i shouldn't speed, but if you guys want to criticize me there talk to my father..or laura. haha).

LITERALLY EVERYDAY.

everyday i also think about how the road i take to and from school, I-70, will take me all the way to DC (well, frederick, but same difference really). i promise. i've driven it!

i miss DC, so far STL is not my favorite city, i'm not gonna lie. i think part of it is cause all i ever do is work (or do classes as is the case currently) and it is such a HUGE change from college. waking up at 6 am everyday sucks. going to bed every night at 9pm is depressing. being too tired to do anything on weekends is boring.

i think that i would have these same issues if i was in DC, the adjustment from college to working life is going to be hard for anybody. i guess my biggest thing is that when i do things in DC i know what to expect, i'm still discovering STL, which seems like more work than i'm willing to do right now.

anyways, sorry for the slightly pessimistic blog post.... TFA has warned us that october is called "black october" because basically now is the time when all new teachers are starting to see that

1. they haven't accomplished very much (which is understandable, but unacceptable, which is hard to deal with)

2. the "honeymoon period" is over and the kids, while they may like you (as is the case with me) still will be crazy

3. all of the above kicks in, before it was kind of exciting, now you're just tired

4. it's getting darker.

ok

i promise, i will work on the pessimism, but i really do hate missouri drivers!!!