the end. :)

Well. Summer Academy is over, and I couldn't be more thrilled! I mean, I enjoyed it for the most part, but it was an intense five weeks. Now to commence a few weeks of relaxing and not thinking about school...I've put myself on school detox--nothing school related for two weeks. I think I might even leave my trunk full of school supplies for the next two weeks rather than venture into the school. Though I do need to drive it home at the end of this week...hmmm...

Test responses are always a good source of entertainment. Especially free response questions from the admissions test we administered at the end of the program which has a section of history/common knowledge questions.

Name the five great lakes.
1. Erie
2. Loch Ness

Name the current President and Vice President.
there isn't one

Name the country to the north of the US.
Asia

Name the country to the south of the US.
California

or

Australia

Name the first two African Americans to be appointed to the Supreme Court [Note: I do not currently know this information...and...yes, a quick Google search determined that I never did. However, I have at least HEARD the name Thurgood Marshall before, and I could have probably told you he was a Supreme Court justice. Number two was Clarence Thomas. And that's enough history for today.]
Harriet Tubman

or

Martin Luther King

or

Malcolm X


Name the three ships Columbus brought to the US.
Atlantis


Oh boy. I think that some of the responses were due to the fact that the kids just don't read the questions and are intimidated by a test that's 20 pages long. But others...I don't know...

In other recent events, I spend over an hour at the library yesterday looking for some good books to read at the beach next week. I will let you know which ones are the best :) I got side-tracked at the checkout by the display of foreign films, and ended up getting two and then getting four more movies from upstairs. I watched the first foreign one today, it is called "The Forest for the Trees" and it's a German film which won a few film festival awards. It was a waste of time...but at least it was only 81 minutes long. I just don't do artistic films well. I mean, I did sort of empathize with the main character who was a young teacher...but at the end she is driving and climbs into the back seat of her car and the car drives itself. Then it was over. And it never crashed, which I was expecting. Meh. Oh well. I think I caught some of the overall symbolism/message, but I much prefer my movies to be tied up in pretty little boxes. I can't deal with too many loose ends. And the box needs to at least contain a plot, please.

Sittin' in a tree...

Kids and their parents are amazing. I mean seriously. Unbelievable.

Yesterday John and I came down to the gym for afterschool activities...as we walked into the hallway by the gym, we noticed an 8th grade boy and a 9th grade girl in front of us. As they parted ways to go to their respective locker rooms, they exchanged a quick smooch. My mouth dropped open and John yelled down the hall that he'd be dealing with them later. They quickly scurried away. (Yes, it's not a big deal in a public school, but here we don't even let them hold hands...) They knew they were in trouble.

At the end of the day, John went out to talk to their parents who were picking them up. Before he could even say anything to the girl's mother she said, "Mr. John, I don't know what you're going to tell me, but I'm telling you right now that no matter what it is, I'm going to believe my daughter's story over yours. My daughter is not crazy."

He tried explaining to her that not one but TWO adults had seen it happen and that he was only trying to nip things in the bud before they got any worse. The girl swore up and down that nothing had happened; and the mom believed every word of it!

The boy’s mother, on the other hand, TORE into him! Apparently it was amazing (I wasn’t actually there to hear it…) The two offenders had had some time to consult with one another and get their story straight. It went something like this: “We were walking down the hall, and someone said look out because Mr. John was coming, and so we turned to look and maybe our faces touched.” John told him that they shouldn’t have been afraid of him coming if they hadn’t been doing anything wrong. The mother was like, “Exactly! I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself is floating across the water towards you! You shouldn’t be doing something that you’re afraid of someone else seeing!”

I am so sorry that I missed it.

Things I hate

Usually I write about things I like about teaching. Now for some that I hate.

1. The sound of the pencil sharpener. Oh. My. GOSH. There is nothing worse than trying to talk while there is this annoying grinding sound in the background. I started off the summer with a normal pencil sharpener in the back of the room. The kind you actually have to turn to make it work. This pencil sharpener is obviously quite old because all it succeeded in doing was chewing pencils to mere stubs before spitting them back at the students. So then I stole the blender-like electric sharpener from the teacher's lounge. Not much better...just because it does all the work for you doesn't mean it does the work any better, or any more quietly.

I think I'm going to invest in a bunch of hand held sharpeners...the silent ones. They're the kind I use during the school year, and they keep me sane...

2. The sound of drumming on desks. Nothing will make me threaten to cut your hands off faster than you sitting in my classroom and tapping or drumming beats. Even if they're good ones.

3. I swear I had one more to add to this list. I'm sure I'll remember it soon...

matter, Sonic and Easter Island

By the time I hit the end of the day, I am pretty tired of dealing with the talkative 9th graders. They are actually great in class discussions if I can manage to channel their energy into some sort of science related stream (sometimes the stream is straight and clear and sometimes it goes over a waterfall and turns into a swamp...:-P). Today was no exception; we were talking about matter, what it is and what it isn't. We hit a few rapids in the middle of class which resulted in me laughing just as much as them...at that point I knew we had to wrap it up because we were quickly losing momentum... Anyway, here's a little of what you would have heard, had you been there.

me: Can you stop the wind?
student: You can break wind!

student: Does Mars have people on it?

Onomatopoeia Kid: So if I'm on the moon, and someone's looking at the moon...
Loud Girl: Hey, what's that big black spot on the moon?!?

The one that really made me laugh though, was Onomatopoeia Boy. One of the girls in the class had taken her weave out over the weekend, so her hair was short. She was combing it during our discussion (I barely noticed because I was paddling so hard to keep the discussion going in the right direction), and apparently he decided to help her. He took her comb and started combing her hair so it went straight out behind her head, then he was like, "She look like Sonic!" That's when I lost it. It was really just too funny...

Oh, and one more from lunch. One of the really talkative 8th grade boys came over to the teacher table and was, I think, trying to give bars to Mr. John (co-director and discipline director). John looked at him and said, "Listen. I need to tell you something that's going to help you later in life. Are you ready?"
student: "Yeah."
Mr. John: "Your head looks like an Easter Island statue."

And thus, he will now be known as Easter Island Boy. I'm pretty sure he had no idea what John was talking about, but the rest of the teachers found it pretty funny...:)

Because we all miss them...

A bunch of returning students came to visit us at the end of the day yesterday. Some of them were here to talk to the new students about school culture, and some were here to help with afterschool activities...and some were just here to visit. So we've got a few incidents that involve some of our old favorites :)

Track Star Girl (the one who sent me the facebook message a few posts ago) came and sat on my chair with me. I was sitting next to another teacher, FS's advisor. FS came over and, since I had a marker, I started trying to draw on his face (I know, I'm so mature...) His advisor started holding him down so I could draw on his forehead, but eventually, because he was wiggling so much, I just drew a smiley on the back of his neck. Once it was completed, Track Star Girl annouced: "He has a smiley face on the back of his forehead!" Which we were all immediately required to make fun of her for saying... :-P Good times...

Flava Flav was also there to visit. His comment upon seeing me was,
"Miss Book, you look different, like more mature."
me: Are you calling me fat?
FF: No, I'm just saying you look more mature...like more condensed or something...
Cody: I think he's trying to say that you're hot...

Too much information...

You know it's going to be a good day when these are the first words you hear out of an 8th grade girl at the beginning of first period...

"Miss Book, I have diarrhea."

Awesome.

Some quotes...

If you'd been a fly on the wall of my classroom during the past two weeks, you would have heard some of the following exchanges...and I hope you would have laughed :)

me (reading from the book "Would You Rather...?"): Would you rather be the one who throws up or the one who cleans it up?
student: Well, when you throw up...it opens up all kinds of opportunities!


student: Hey, Veteran 8th Grade Boy, you forgot your purse!
V8 Boy: It's not a purse! It's a shiny man-bag!
(V8 Boy is repeating the 8th grade...so I've already had him for a year...)


me: Why is milk white?
student 1: Because cow's udders are racist.
student 2: Does chocolate milk come from brown cows?

Would you believe that they were surprised when I told them no?!?!

Student with Onomatopoeic Name (in the interest of anonymity, I can't tell you what his name is, but it is fun to say, plus, if I typed it, you'd probably not know how to pronounce it anyway ;) ):
Well, all milks are white, it's just that some have black or brown spots, but they're still white underneath, so they have white milk.
me: Do you mean cows?
Onomatopoeic: Yeah...what did I say?

These exchanges convinced me that we need to take a field trip to a dairy farm...


As I'm writing a conversion problem on the board,
Nonstop Talker (8th grade boy): Excuse me, can I see your license to give us a number this big?


I have a couple of stories to share, but I'll do that later this week...the lesson plans are calling me right now...