And thus...

Whew, it's been an adventurous week in the classroom! (And by that, I mean disastrous!) Due to my PREVIOUSLY excellently-behaved classroom, their horrible behavior this week was a shocker! I don't know if it's due to my sudden influx of new students or the holidays, but needless to say, it requires a bunch more work on my part.

Either way, (luckily) they still do not cease to be entertaining. As of late, we've been discussing the Civil War in History. Wars in history are completely unknown to these kids. As far as they knew, the Civil War involved someone handing out guns on both sides and people running around shooting anything that moved for four years straight, non-stop. So, we had to put that notion to bed. Needless to say, the fact that armies would line up, and then start running at each other with guns was a completely foreign concept (and quite distressing, as well!) After a discussion of the surprising violent Battle of Bull Run, one particularly innocent student looks up at me and says, "Mrs. Shetler, how come they didn't just use pillows instead of guns? It would have been so much safer!" Bless his heart...

Then, the next day as we were continuing this discussion about Civil War battles, a student asks me, "Mrs. Shetler, who were we?" As in, which side were we on? Another kid pipes up, "Yeah, did we win?" I was literally speechless. How does one answer this? Technically, Arizona wasn't a state (and wouldn't be for another 50 years) so the residents had no "side." I couldn't tell him that "we" (as in the US) won, because I'm sure that's not how Civil War history is taught in South. They're so used to it being "us against them" in all other wars in history, as well as in every video game they play. I ended up telling them some adaptation of what I described above, but this was just very difficult for them to understand :-) If nothing else, I just had to laugh at how much this question stumped me!

On an unrelated note, my students randomly get excited about using new words (even down to making up words just for the sake of using new words). A while ago, we were reading a poem that used the word "shall" and I mentioned in passing that it was a more formal, fancy way of saying "will." Next thing I knew, I had a girl who was telling me, "I shall try inverse operations, but I'm not sure about it..." Then this week, I had another student randomly start using the word Thus. So now, I had 13 year olds running around saying, "I lost my voice, and thus I shouldn't talk today." "...and thus, Arturo rode his bike over my foot." "Thus the water moves the sediment down the river," etc. It's hilarious :-) I tell them to keep using those words, because it'll guarantee them a great score on their state writing tests, because it is so unexpected!

The following video is basically unrelated, but a great excuse to combine Jack Black and school :-)

You Have a WHAT?

This week was our last week of testing (finally!! yeah!!) For various reasons relating to testing, the kids had a different schedule all week. Usually, we don't allow them to go to the restrooms (other than complete emergencies) except before school and at lunch. In the morning, this is never a problem because they start class at 8:30 and leave at 10:45 for lunch.  However, during testing week, their lunch gets pushed back almost two hours, so they have to wait a lot longer to use the restroom. (I'm going somewhere with this, don't worry.) 

So, one day, as our late lunch is finally approaching, a kid tells me he has a msrlglkskakgkskkga. (This is what I heard). After about the third mumbling time, I finally make out that he's telling me he thinks he has a mrmsgmslrl infection. I finally said, "You have WHAT kind of an infection?" To which he frustratedly responds, "I think I have a flabber infection!!" I looked at him (knowing full well he really needed to use the restroom) and said, "You mean, you think you have a BLADDER infection?" He and the whole rest of the class crack up, but he must save face, so he goes on proclaiming he has a flabber :-)  That was definitely the comic relief necessary after a stressful day of testing :-)

Word play with 6th graders

It's really funny listening to kids figure out how/why certain words and phrases work the way they do. We're in the middle of a series of tobacco lessons, and today we were talking about why peer pressure affects kids and one girl came to a revelation. "Hey! I get it! Peers are people like you and they put pressure on you! Peer pressure! I get that now!" Lights going on...

Then, out of the blue, a different kid comes up to me today and informed me what "Jewish" means. Before I could answer, he says "It means when people are half Jewish, you know, like sort of Jewish. That's why they're called Jew-ish." :-) Gotta love 6th grade word play :-) 

Another edition of, "Seriously?!?"

And welcome to another edition of "Seriously?!?" (I'm not sure why my life is starting to feel like a game show, but it's distressing how many of my postings are taking that form!! And yes, this is vaguely reminiscent of Seth Myers and Amy Poehler's version of "Really?!?" on SNL.) A student comes in from lunch last week and asks if he can go to the restroom to wash his hands (given that there is no soap provided in the classrooms, and they stopped giving us our monthly ration of paper towels in December--hello budget cuts...). He said he needed to go wash the fish smell off of his hands. 

Naturally, I asked why his hands smelled like fish. "Me and Carlos were playing Fish Tag." You were playing WHAT?? I was then informed that Fish Tag meant picking up a dead fish (from the canal the school backs up to) and throwing it at your friend.  You've got to be kidding me. I was so mad at them, I really wanted to make them sit and suffer with their fish smell, but I knew that would make ME sit and suffer with their fish smell (and I have a policy against punishing kids AND myself in the process). So, I wrote them both detention and told them to go wash their hands. I was in such a state of disbelief when they explained, innocently of course, what they were doing. I did feel a little better after I reamed them both out for having even considered taking a DEAD fish off the ground and throwing it at each other... Unbelievable.

Stay tuned for next week's edition of "Seriously?!?" in which I catch a 6th grader eating part of his AIMS test. (This hasn't happened yet, but it wouldn't even surprise me at this point.) 

Getting told by 6th Graders

Welcome to another rousing episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders." 

It goes like this. My kids inform me of something they THINK I have no idea about. For instance, when they say things like, "My pencil got jacked! (That means someone stole it, Mrs. Shetler.)" Seriously guys. I'm not that old. 

Well, the Friday before Spring Break (Friday the 13th) when we are 5 school days away from our standardized testing, another episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders" was sprung on me. I was trying to get through the content we needed to cover that day (we're too close to testing to spend the day before spring break watching movies or having a party). The Literature book passage we were reading was about genes and chromosomes, and the kids were not interested in reading (neither was I for that matter). 

However, they WERE interested in talking about it. So we had several discussions about cloning, if twins have the same DNA, etc., etc. Then someone asked about how the woman had 8 babies at once. So I said, "Well, when they make a baby in a lab with an egg and sperm--" and they were gone. You can't just launch into talk of those things without preface, which I did unthinkingly. Eventually I did manage to get through the discussion, but not before several other topics came up along this line, and finally one girl pipes up with this winner: 

"Mrs. Shetler, did you know that in high school they have a whole class about this stuff?? It's called Sex Ed."

And BAM, so ends another episode of "Getting Told By 6th Graders" :-) 

Challenges!

Yesterday, my kids were being tested for something, and so they had to wait in the hallway and read their books. I look over and one kid has his book upside down. I told him to flip it over, figuring he was just being a dork. He looks at me with a smile and says, "I'm just trying to challenge myself!" 

That was my smile of the day :-)

Tornadoes and Menopause

I was in the middle of a science lesson this week on tornadoes. (Reminder: this is the first week I have ever, in my entire life, taught science.) My kids were fairly engaged and of course, asking all kinds of questions I can't answer, so we started a list. They were asking things like, "What happens if a tornado runs into a mountain?" and "Could a chicken survive a tornado?" and "What happens if a plane flies into a tornado?" I was wracking my brain for any bit of information I have about tornadoes, and can't answer any of the questions. In the midst of this, one kid pipes up and says, "What's menopause?"

I lost it. I totally cracked up. I have no idea where that question came from, but I was ecstatic that for once I had a decent answer. I said, "I'll tell you when we study the human body next semester." 

We'll see if he remembers.  I'm not sure if this makes me a good teacher or not, but it sure gave me a good laugh :-)