Well at least I haven't heard THAT!

As we enter the 5th week of school (and half my class is out sick -- not to mention the principal, the CRC, the nurse, and several other teachers), I realize that many and most of my posts here on my blog have been negative, complaining, or at least depressing. There's no doubt that I am having a rough year, but this blog is supposed to be about the OCCASIONAL rant, not the rant as norm.

Therefore, it's time for some humor. Or at least some attempted humor.

I thought I'd put together a little list of things that, despite all else, I haven't heard my kids utter this year. Yet.

1) What the heck are numbers?
2) Why is there green stuff shooting out of the toilets?
3) I think I should like to place myself in time-out, thank you very much.
4) This pencil is clearly of the finest quality!
5) What are those 2 lines? (referring to the equal sign)
6) My mom says if somebody spits on me, I should spit on them. (Oh wait, I DID hear that one this morning, from a little girl getting off the bus.)
7) Mmmmm!! Sloppy Gummy Bear Joe for lunch!!
8) Which end of the crayon colors?
9) Mister Teacher, I read your novel, Learn Me Good, this weekend, and it was awesome!
10) My parents let me have coffee and chocolate cake for breakfast!!
11) How much for your whole collection of markers?
12) Does this look infected to you?
13) Is Tequila a noun or a verb?
14) Par-kor!!
15) Let's play Golden Girls! I'll be Blanche!
16) The world is going to end in 2012 anyway, so why do we need to learn math?
17) My mortgage is killing me!
18) Something inside my desk is moving.
19) Kanye West is a jackass.
20) I got that question right. Where are the free hot dogs?
21) Edward or Jacob?
22) I lost a toe this weekend, doing long division.
23) Uh, I was told there would be no math.

Getting to know me

I've been with my new kids for 3 weeks now, and I can tell that they are still feeling me out, still learning how I operate and what to expect from day to day. I know that I tend to flip between serious and joking sometimes, and it's obvious that some of my kids can't tell the difference yet.

The other day, we were going over a homework question. It was a word problem that said something about someone's garden. We had just finished reading a story called "Ugly Vegetables," so as I was reading the word problem, I said, "Tim's garden is 5 feet wide. Oh, maybe Tim is planting some UGLY VEGETABLES!"

Dead silence. I looked out into a sea of blank faces, as a tumbleweed slowly drifted across the room. I tapped on the end of my vis-a-vis marker and spoke into it -- "Is this thing on?"

After lunch, with my second class, I tried the exact same bit. Maybe it's just the personalities of the different kids, maybe I improved the timing in my comedy act, or maybe the pizza pockets had nitrous oxide in them, but the results were decidedly different.

"Tim's garden is 5 feet wide. Oh, hey, I'll bet Tim is planting some UGLY VEGETABLES!"

The room exploded into laughter and applause like Showtime at the Apollo Theater. Kids were shouting "WOO WOO!" and making the "raise the roof" gesture.

Different strokes for different folks, I suppose.


On a different note, I received an INCREDIBLY pleasant surprise last week when I checked my Lulu sales report for the month of October. My book, Learn Me Good, has been selling 2-5 copies per month, but in October, almost THIRTY copies were sold!

So I want to say a very warm THANK YOU to everyone who purchased a copy of Learn Me Good last month! I hope you enjoy it, and I greatly appreciate your support!!!