and also, the economy.

Today I had the last of my current event presentations. Students were told they would receive extra credit if they could explain how their article was related to something we learned in Geography. Essentially all they had to do was make some sort of critical thinking inference, really not that hard.

The last girl to present asked if she would get points if she could "make something up" as she did her presentation. I told her I would give her points if what she said made sense.

Her article was about an injured Iraq war veteran. She read a very articulate summary about life after a traumatic injury and making the choice to stay positive. She then proceeded to make her attempt at the extra credit question. It started out great:

"This article shows how war can have a very serious impact on people living both inside and outside the country. This guy got hurt really bad defending people from a bad leader."

She should have stopped there. Instead she ended with...

"and also, the economy."

That was it. No explanation about how it impacts the economy, just "and also, the economy."

8th grade boys are...

...bad liars.

...interesting dressers.

...a variety of heights and weights.

...not worth dating (by 8th grade girls, not me. I am not Mary Kay...)

...often stinky.

and finally...

...full of farts.

Double Sided is Hard

I am always amazed at the reasons my students have for not completing their homework. Take this gem from yesterday:

Student: "Mrs. Haslam, you didn't give me the crossword puzzle."
Me: "It's on the back of your worksheet, did you check?"
Student: "Yeah, I looked. It's not there."
Me: "check again."
Student: "oh, there it is."

as my dad would say, "strive me gength"

Lavatory

One of my favorite students, whose identity I shall protect by calling him "C.S. Lewis", is a Korean exchange student who speaks with a British accent and dresses like a 50 yr old in the early 20's (thus his nickname). He is brilliant and way too smart for his age. He is also incredibly lazy.

When I had him last year, I got so tired of his excessive "lavatory" use, that I told him he could go twice and week. I am not against student bathroom use. I am against students using the excuse of a bathroom break to simply wander the halls because they don't want to be in class. This was what CS was doing which was why I restricted him.

I have CS again this quarter in Washington State History. On Monday, he asked to use the lavatory (this is what he calls it b/c of his english training by a Brit) and as soon as he left, the following conversation occured:

friends of CS: "Can we all leave the classroom so it's empty when he comes back?"
me: " sure, go stand outside and peer in the windows"
(mass exodus of 25 kids)

upon his return, CS: "what is going on here, where is everyone?"
me: "i don't know what you are talking about."
CS: "i can see them looking in the windows."

His classmates return, we all have a good laugh. CS walks over to my desk and said "Mrs. Haslam, that had to be one of the worst pranks ever."

Dumb Question

Student: "Mrs. Haslam, what section are we reading tomorrow?"
Me (thinking I'd inspired a love of Geography and this person wants to learn all they can): "Why?"
Student: "Because I want to know where to leave this note for whoever sits here."
Me: "Seriously, did you just ask me that?"
Student: "huh?"
Me: "do you think I think it's a good idea for you to leave notes for you friends to read during class?"
Student: "oh."

Jr High Fashion

observed: December 2011...

For those of you who missed it on Facebook a few weeks ago, I wrote that one of my favorite parts of teaching junior highers is that "in a sea of Juicy, Uggs and Citizen jeans, there will always be someone wearing sweatpants and dress shoes"

The Worm and Blind Justice

My third year of teaching was my first year of teaching single gender classes. I really loved having only one gender at a time, partially because I think I got to see my *real* students and not some semi-fake version meant to impress the other gender (which is funny because how impressive can a 7th grade boy really be?!) While I really enjoyed my girls classes, the boys classes were a source of constant entertainment (and frustration):

- after losing participation points for the whole class because he could not keep his mouth shut, I told a student he could earn those points back by doing something to entertain me. He offered to do the worm and I accepted. It was amazing.

- three boys in the back of the room could not keep their hands of the blinds. It was more annoying than anything else so I kept telling them to knock it off just because it bugged me. One of these boys started hitting the other two every time they tried to touch the blinds so I asked him what he was doing. He said he was offering "blind justice" and it was his duty to protect the blinds. A few days later he was back to touching the blinds and he informed me that "blind justice" had retired. On the last day of school, he drew a picture of himself as a sheriff with a "blind justice" badge on and stuck it to the window.

- one of my boys figured out that I really liked the tv show The Office. He decided from that moment on he was going to pretend to be Dwight and insisted that I call him by that name. I cannot tell you how many times I called on him to answer a homework question and he proceeded to tell me all he knew about "bears and beets" in his best Dwight voice.

- one of my favorite (yes, we all have favorites) boys decided about halfway through the year that he was a ninja. When he didn't know an answer on a test, he'd write "ninja". He was a hurdler in track and on the back of a quiz, he drew a ninja jumping over a hurdle. He asked if I would call him "grasshopper" instead of by his name and of course I said yes.

- my first semester of boys got to see my pregnant belly grow from hardly visible to being so big I was accidently erasing the white board. Upon my first visit back to school after having Micah, one of these boys told me "I'd really slimmed down."

Given that my husband would probably have done any or all of the above when he was in junior high, I like to think these boys are preparing me for stuff my son will try to pull in the future!