They Have Some Splainin to Do

While I was out on Friday, and my class was being supervised by a substitute, I received the following messages:

Student 1: SHE SPIT ON THE FLOOR WHILE SHE LICKED MY SCREEN Tongue out. SHE DID NOT SPIT IN HER HAIR OK DONT BELIVE HER! I AM NOT LYEING

Student 2: What!!!!!!!!!!Yell

Student 3: i did not lick his screen i pretended to the i laughed and drooled and it got in my hair and fell on the ground. after that i cleaned it up.

Sigh. Won't that be a fun conversation on Monday.

Ms. Brightsides

As I mentioned yesterday, Heidi's parents are in town and the main activity on the agenda is shopping, both for Heidi's birthday and some early Christmas gift buying as well. Usually, I excuse myself from a day at the mall, but this time, I really couldn't say no and so here we are, entering hour 5. Best to look at the bright side, I think-- I got my 10,000 steps 2 hours ago!

We'll See

I'm going to be out of school tomorrow because Heidi's folks are coming into town-- in fact they are stuck in our infamous rush hour traffic even now. It's usually kind of a chore to make sub plans, but today I told my students I would be out and instructed them to keep going on the stuff they are working on. They seemed to really embrace the idea, and when I told them that I was trusting them to be responsible, they practically cheered: "We can do it!"

You Know the Drill

As I've mentioned before, I have an activity where the students in my reading class have a set of question starters organized in Bloom's taxonomy, from lower to higher order thinking skill. Their task is to compose a five question quiz based on the memoir we are reading. Each question must be from a different category and they also have to provide an answer key. Then they give the quiz to another student (and take one that someone else has composed), grade the quiz that they created using the key, and have a conference with the other student about the results.

They think it's fun, and so they cheerfully revisit the text, ask higher order questions, and answer them-- twice! As they work on the assignment many students include creative twists, and some of the quizzes are both amusing and revealing, like the one today with this set of directions:

Just answer the question with something you think is correct.

Sonny Days

"Is that your son?" one of my students asked when a young PE teacher on our team stopped by my classroom to get the details about our field trip today.

"No!" I rolled my eyes at the suggestion, but then considered it a moment: he is a tall, blue-eyed skateboarder with a cute little man bun who works really hard in the best interest of his students.

"But, I'd take him if he needed a home," I added.

Food Fancy

How could I not try pickled potatoes? The recipe called for slicing and then frying them after brining, but I decided to chunk and roast them. Delicious! It's like a morsel of warm potato salad in every bite.

Celebrate Life

There was a street fair surrounding the funeral home when we arrived yesterday. All the side streets were closed for blocks, and on Main Street, police officers in neon-orange vests stopped traffic for any pedestrians who wanted to cross. The staff at the funeral home were keeping a watchful eye for people who were trying to find festival parking in their lot, but noting our black clothes and out of state plates, they didn't even look twice at us when we pulled in.

The viewing ended at twelve but the service was not scheduled until 1. The church was only a few blocks away, and so we decided to walk. Our path took us through the fair, and we stopped for coffee, browsed t-shirts at a sidewalk sale, and played with the kittens they had for adoption at the pet shop. It was a warm reminder that life, somehow, goes on no matter what.

"I think Tom did this," his sister told us before we left the wake. "The fair was rescheduled from a couple weeks ago from the hurricane that never came. Now we're going to lose half the crowd to the beer tent!"