Endless entertainment...

Today we were talking about different types of renewable energy. I asked Flava Flav to tell us what he'd learned about wind power from his homework and he read me a few sentences from the reading...
Me: Okay, so other types of power use steam to turn turbines. What turns the turbine with wind power?
Flava Flav: (looking down, almost to himself) Love.

A few minutes later after I had given them instructions for a project they were to be working on, I looked up and started to tell him to sit down and be quiet. Annoying Boy was also singing, so I was talking to both of them. At that point, Flava Flav started grinding on the large wooden pole in the middle of the room...and I couldn't keep a straight face anymore...

Speaking of that wooden beam, we started our discussion of renewable and nonrenewable resources yesterday, and we were talking about trees. Flava Flav asked how we got wood from trees...so I explained about cutting down trees and making boards from the logs...and I pointed to the wooden pole as an example.
Flava Flav: That's from a tree?!?!?!?

That was after he came into class and announced that he had cataracts in his hand...

Finally, a story not about Flava Flav...
In math lab yesterday, the ninth grade girls somehow got into a discussion about fat people vs. bulky people. One of the girls announced: "My dad is so fat in his belly...it looks like he has seven uplets in there!"

ooooooh, the wonders never cease...

So it's been a crazy week with track meets and late nights and such. Yesterday was the extra special kind of fun that happens when two teachers get to spend a whole day with four 8th graders (riding in a van to and from a track invitational, plus all of the time actually at the invitational...). It was actually a pretty good time; the kids were well behaved and ran well, and it was a gorgeously sunny day, so I can't complain too much. Here are some of the highlights...

While we were waiting around in the stands for the meet to actually start, Flava Flav came racing up the steps to inform "I'm-Dating-an-Upperclassman" Boy that Grandpa was talking to a girl!!! FF was scrambling for DaU Boy to give him his phone so Grandpa could get their numbers... One of the coaches decided he had to see this to believe it, so they all went back down there. Sure enough, there was Grandpa surrounded by a bunch of suburban junior high girls. The coach came back and told us that this was apparently how it happened:

The 8th grade boys were wearing the old jerseys with just the school logo and no name, with the idea being that people would ask what school they were from, thus getting more publicity for the school. Apparently one of the girls asked Grandpa what school he was from and he told them, and they started to walk away. As they turned to leave he said, "We go to school for 12 hours a day."
Apparently that is a good pick up line because they all came back to talk to him! Who would have thought... :)

We had a pretty hilarious time on the ride home (which is about an hour long), lots of entertainment from Flava Flav (singing and dancing ridiculously...). As well as some of the following comments:


Grandpa: Man, my throat is all raspy! It must be all of that breathing...

The other coach and I pretty much lost it on that one.


Coach: Do you all have rides home?
DaU Boy: Yeah, I'm taking the bus.
Coach: Are you sure you're allowed?
DaU Boy: Yeah.
Flava Flav: How can you even ask us that? We gangsters! Gangsters don't ride the bus, the bus rides us!

I'm sure there were more. If I ever remember them, I'll post about them in the future.


The 8th grade boys who aren't in track are in golf. Apparently a woman from the pregnancy care center came in this past week to talk to them about teenage pregnancy and related topics. At golf the other day, three of the 8th grade boys were still processing what they'd "learned".
Boys: Ms. Debbie! Did you know that you can get an STD just by talking about sex??!? The lady who talked to us today told us that!
Ms. D: What?
Boys: Yeah! She said that you can get an STD from oral sex! Is that true???

---------

Under the heading of other unbelievable comments comes the following from three, yes THREE, of the seniors. I handed out a test yesterday on stoichiometry (the mathematics of chemical reactions), and they must have been really stressed out and overwhelmed by the one page test because at three different points during the period I had to hear the following question:
"Is liquid oxygen the same thing as water?"

oh.
my.
gosh.

It was almost enough to make me put my head down on my desk and cry :-p

By the time one girl came up to me and said "this question says 'what mass of oxygen is required...' do they want the answer in moles?", I looked at her and told her to stop talking to me and sit down.

You should have heard the uproar when I gave them masses in kilograms instead of grams and even GAVE THEM THE CONVERSION!

Whew. Good thing most of them are out of the building and I don't have to deal with them today :-P

"Your mom's going to the country..."

Can you name that tune/artist? I'm willing to bet that at least a couple of you can...:)

We went to a track meet yesterday that was sort of out in the middle of nowhere (since most of the city schools are big and we're small...we have to drive awhile to compete against smaller schools). As we were driving on some windy roads past farms and such, there were some pretty amusing comments coming out of the seats behind me...
"Man! When you're in a place like this no one's gonna hear you if you scream! I suggest the buddy system."
"There ain't even street lights out here! No projects or nothin'!"
"There's nothing out here! They got no choice BUT to run!"

---------------------


On a completely different note, another teacher related the following interaction to me which happened in her class...
Teacher: Crazy Boy! Stop humping the chair!
Crazy Boy: I'm not! The chair's humping me!

HAH!

Yet another hair-themed post...

So I was walking past a classroom one day this past week and noticed that one of the ninth grade classes seemed to be without a teacher, so I poked my head in. The rest of the conversation went something like this:

Cursed Boy: We have an invisible teacher.
Favorite Student: Yeah, and we don't need you. You lost your teaching power when you cut your hair.
CB: Yeah! Like Zeus...I mean.....Goldilocks...I mean...
Me: Samson?
CB: Yeah! Like Samson!

FS: Miss Book your legs look really tan.
Me: Yeah? Actually...I've been working here so long that I'm turning black.
FS: What??!
Me:
FS and CB: Aaaaahhhhhh! It's like you're an alien!!!



And at the track meet yesterday, one of the girls in the 400m relay lost her scrunchie as she was running. You should have heard the kids in the stands as she ran: "Look at her hair! Look at her hair!" (Note that this girl cares about her hair. A lot. And she likes doing everyone else's hair to the extent that I think she wants to open her own salon someday. Anyway...)
After the race (which they rocked), Future Hairdresser came over to the fence by the stands and was asking repeatedly for her brush. Her friends were too excited though...

"You hair was flowing like it was yours! It was all out behind you! Almost like Miss Book's!"

She pretty much ignored them and kept asking for her brush until they found it for her...:)

New haircut, take two...

Sorry...spring break slowed things down a little... :)

So the rest of the kids saw my haircut today. I thought I'd share a few more comments:
again, I got a lot of "Why would you do that?!?!?"
"You look like a librarian."
"It makes your head look bigger...and your neck look longer..."
me: "so you're saying I look like a giraffe?"

Mr. Arrogant: It's like we have a real teacher now!
Me: What was I before?
Mr. A: Well before it was just like some super smart geek was teaching our class. Now it looks like we have a real teacher!

I also told the 8th graders that I'd had a weave all year and just took it out...