Prior installments:
Met a student with a cool alliterative name.
Student: “Yeah. All my siblings have these initials.”
Me: “So your parents are…?”
Student: “Weird? Yes. And divorced.”
Veteran teacher got AirPods over the summer. Wears them when he’s walking the hallways now, very satisfied.
Former student: “You’re like Michael Scott. Only, you know, less problematic.”
Group of students gathered around the attendance window one morning forty minutes after schools started, puzzled, talking about how their substitute bus driver took them to a high school in Leesburg by mistake.
Girl in the hallway laughing convulsively, almost like she’s crying. I double-take. She says, “don’t worry. I’m not crazy.”
I see a student from last year. He says he’s able to read in class now. I ask if he’s gained focus. “I gained me some Adderall!”
Me: “Let’s get to it, Aaron. Idle hands do the devil’s work.”
Aaron: “How much does the devil pay?”
Me: “He pays nothing. He’s the devil.”
Aaron: “Ah. So it’s like an unpaid internship?”
Dentime group singing a very dark rendition of Smash Mouth’s “All Star” in honor of the lead singer dying of liver failure.
Dentime student: “Ms. Sim, what’s your best dad joke?”
Sim: “You blocks…you stones! You worse than senseless things!”
Seventh block student Jack burst into my eighth block class to show me his juggling progress. The next day I scolded him about barging into class. He said, “Sorry. Was it an honors class?”
Got an email from a student asking if I would sponsor debate — at Champe. I have not worked there in two years.
Kids keep their laptop screens so incredibly dim. How do they see anything?
Boys do a thing where they stretch back and the boy behind them helps them stretch their arms.
Making origami boxes and hot gluing them to the bulletin board. I’m explaining how cool this is to my uninterested class when a neighboring teacher walks in, confused at what I’m doing. I begin explaining to her how cool this is and she walks out before I finish.
Multiple students have told me they did band in middle school only because there was a trip to Hershey at the end of the year.
“We’ll post this on the club account, as soon as we get the password from the person who graduated.” Very typical saying in high school.
Students claim they were given a Quizlet in Drivers Ed that contained 450 driving terms. The way that class has vexed all students in tenth grade has been a motif throughout the semester.
Me: “That septum piercing is new.”
Student: “Yeah I did it in the bathroom at school this morning”
Me: “That’s disgusting.”
Student: “It’s ok…I sterilized the needle.”
There is no room busier and filled with stress than the testing center on the final block of the quarter.
Me: “Where’d you learn there are 206 bones in the body?”
Caden: “boarding school”
For some reason my name is rendered as S Thomas on the big planning board in the front office.
When playing guitar, the new sarcastic comment is no longer “play Free Bird!” it’s “play Wonderwall!” Not sure why the shift…both songs are equally old to a high school student.
Student eats only the inside of Pop Tarts, leaves a mess of crust crumbs on her desk. Also eats a quarter pound of fruit rollups each day – we did the math.
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A year ago I saw Mr. Staub whistle with his fingers during a fire drill. Real smooth. So I devote all year learning to do it. I see Rusty in the morning and tell him excitedly of my progress. “I can’t whistle with my fingers,” he says, moving away from me as tactfully as possible.