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...:)