Don't feed the animals...I mean, children

Lesson two thousand and three: Never ever give ten year olds cupcakes and brownies at lunch. Save it for the end of the day, right before the parents show up.

I've discovered I have the ability to tell which child is causing trouble without looking up now...YES! This is a talent that always spooked the hell out of me as a student. I'd pass a note to my friend via the clip on a pen or inside a pencil sharpener and ol' Eagle Eyes at the front of the room would automatically know I was up to no good--even though she was facing the chalkboard (this was the olden days before whiteboards and TV and civilization you know).

After perplexing my class with this new-found talent, we moved on to the actual study of geometry. The only word that comes to mind when I hear geometry is ICK. Even after 10 years, I remember Mr Von Handorf and the horror of proofs. So far I'm successful in tricking my kids into believing I know what I'm doing, but I'm one QED away from losing all authority on the matter. I could probably let one of my students teach from my magical book of answers and things would go swimmingly.

Question of the day: When did cave men start being racist to women?

I tripped over that one (especially with the principal sitting in our room these days).

Umm...first of all, I think you mean sexist...you know, cuz it's based on...gender...and what we think of as sexist was probably a normal way of life for them. Cuz, farmers needed hands and what is the best form of labour for a farm? No, not paying people...kids, people, kids! Women were busy raising babies and um, making food and stuff...MOVING ON, specialization of labour (hoo boy).

Yeah. I did tell ten year olds farmers procreate for the purpose of slave labour. In front of my boss. Well done, me. With any luck he's focused more on his Christmas shopping than my inept teaching.

I need another break to recover from Thanksgiving. Think they'll notice if I just don't come in for a few days?

You are so a knucklehead...no, seriously

Just when I hit the mid-semester slump and start praying for Thanksgiving to hurry up and get here, I walk down the hall and hear a kid insisting his friend is a knucklehead. Gotta love third graders.

I'm sitting here trying to think of something fun and exciting to do for my social studies class today and I've come to the conclusion that the Development of Societies and fun are not compatible. My only hope is that one of my students has an inspirational new take on things. Which isn't too far a stretch--there have been times when the lesson gets away from me and becomes something my students own entirely.

I was teaching number lines to my pre-algebra class one day and as I drew the (somewhat shaky) line on the board, I realized that I couldn't think of the word for what each number on the line was. Upon looking it up later, I realized I should have been calling them units. Instead, I went with notches. This must have been a somewhat foreign word for my ten year olds, as several of them immediately thought I had said nachos. However, although they recognized this as a strange word to show up in math, they did not say anything. Perhaps they assumed (seeing as I was still completely serious) that they just had never heard it before but that it was still accurate. Once the mix-up was discovered, hilarity ensued--but to this day, we still call them nachos instead of units or notches. It makes math a little easier to swallow.

In other student news, one of the seventh grade boys stopped me in the hall the other day and asked what shoe size I wore. You can never predict what you're going to hear on any given day. I need to remember this for the rest of year.