Donate Now Today, after school, I was holding a funnel.  A small, innocent, funnel. Student:  Oh!  Are we going binge drinking? Me:  What? Student:  With the funnel!  Are we binge drinking??  [Grabs funnel, leans back and pretends to binge drink from the funnel]  Isn’t that what you use these for? Me:  [Trying--and failing--not to laugh] …

Donate Now So the school’s talent show is tomorrow night, and one of my 4th period sweethearts is going to sing.  The other day, the choir director was telling me how great she is.  The following conversation ensued:  C:  Hey A!  Are you in the talent show? A is TOTALLY bashful about it… Me:  Oh yeah! …

I have strange students. One of my 4th period goofablls goes through phases of playing with her syntax.  A few weeks ago, she would make everything plural:  “Misses, I’m not dones with my Daily Math Reviews.”  “Jessicas, can you helps mes?”  “Is it times for our lunches?” Thankfully, she grew out of that.  Now, however,…

While discussing triangles–Right, Acute, Obtuse, Scalene, Isosceles, AND Equilateral: J: Miss, how do you memorize all this stuff? R:  Because she’s a woman! Me:  Ex-CUSE me?! R:  Women have good memories. Me:  I–uh–ok.  I don’t have any good trick to mem– R:  That’s why you can’t cheat on them. Me:  WHAT?? R:  Because then they’ll remember and they’ll hold it over you…

My students have binders for my class.  Each student has a binder that lives on the shelf at the back of my room.  In theory, they retrieve this binder at the beginning of class and put them away at the end of each class. On occasion, the binders are not put away properly.  Students will…

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with Sundays.  On the one hand, it’s a perfectly lovely weekend day.  On the other hand, it always ends with the knowledge that I must go back to school the next day. This year, I have come to have more of a hate-hate relationship with Sundays.  There is never,…

A fight nearly broke out in 2nd period today.  In fact, it got so heated that an administrator had to come down the hall to make sure everything was ok.  This fight of potentially epic proportions was about…   The volume of a sphere.   That’s right.  My 8th graders started fighting about who could…

Today, we did a polling lab.  We polled the class about their favorite soda, found the percent of the class that likes each soda, and then extrapolated to find out how many people in the school would like each soda.   Me:  “You must pick one category–Coke, Dr Pepper, Sprite, or Other.  If you prefer…

For the third quarter, I have morning duty.  Basically, I have to watch kids filter from the buses to the gym and make sure that they a.) don’t hurt each other, b.) keep moving, and c.) have their shirts tucked in.  It’s not exactly glamorous, but it certainly makes for some interesting moments: Me:  “Good…

My fortune cookie from Pei Wei this evening: “Endurance and persistence will be rewarded” It’s helpful to be reassured of this sometimes, even if a cookie has to tell me.