So we kick off every school year with boys' and girls' overnight retreats. Due to some behavior issues last year, the girls did not stay overnight this year. We had a blast on our day trip though, and even while we were waiting for parents to pick up their kids, we had entertainment in the form of Ms. Motor Mouth (I swear she never stops talking...) We were in the midst of a conversation in which we discovered that two students who we thought were cousins (they called each other cousins and both of their moms are Jamaican, so it seemed plausible), actually were not.
Ms. MM: Ms Shpiez, no black people are ACTUALLY related!!
(in African-American culture, at least amongst our students, it is very common to refer to close friends as "cousins". They have fooled me multiple times...)
And as the one girl explained how the two families had come to know each other...
"Well when her mom came to the US from Jamaica, my mom was one of the first people she met."
Ms. MM: Did they meet at Ellis Island?
I was actually proud of her for know what Ellis Island was and that it was tangentially relevant to this conversation...
Can you believe Flava Flav is in 11th grade?? He's in my class again! One of his classmates we're going to call Marathon Man. No, he's not a runner, but he's a student I also had in 8th grade...however, he failed 10th grade...so if he makes it through this year and next, he'll have been at the school for six years! They both also have Ms. Brett for history, where the following exchange happened:
Flava Flav: Ms. Brett, have you ever been in a fight? I bet you could do good. You could take out Miss Book. She's fragile.
Marathon Man: Yeah, but she would unleash the power of Jesus Christ on you! You wouldn't make it.
And finally, Dr. W (the other science teacher) and I were called into Mr. John's math class today by the counselor to help clear something up...apparently something akin to the following happened...
The 9th graders were working on an assignment Mr. John had given them. He was sitting at his desk, drinking a Mt. Dew.
Mr. Know-it-All: Mr. John, did you know that Mt. Dew kills sperm cells?
Mr. John: What?
Mr. KiA: Yeah, it's like male birth control--if you drink a six pack of that, you'll be good to go!
Once again, clearing up some health-related misconceptions...and hopefully avoiding some unwanted teenage pregnancies in the process...:-p
