This morning, a very verbal, intelligent student said to me, "Miss Brave, my daddy said something really bad about you." Then she kind of clapped her hands over her mouth. Half-concerned, half-curious, I asked what he had said.
"He wasn't gonna get up and take me to school because he was too lazy. So I said, 'Do you want Miss Brave to give me a bad report card and I won't go to third grade?' And he said, 'If Miss Brave gives you a bad report, I'll just punch her in the face. She's short anyway.'"
Apparently I don't deal with enough; now I have parents telling their students they have no problem with punching me. I felt like I was in that scene in It's a Wonderful Life where George Bailey calls up Zuzu's teacher and bawls her out for letting Zuzu walk home with her coat open and then the teacher's husband punches George in the bar. "She cried for an hour!"
To top it all off, on the way to lunch, one of my girls dropped an entire can of Pringles (why do parents send an entire can of Pringles for lunch? Particularly when we eat lunch at 10 am?) on the staircase, and The Baby decided to eat chips off the floor. I don't know why they constantly pull stunts like that when they're so totally and obviously going to get caught; besides the fact that about six grossed-out classmates ratted him out as soon as we exited the stairwell, plus the fact that their grossed-out-ness was reported to me by another teacher who overheard cries of "Ewwww, he ate it!", but he was staring at me bug-eyed with chipmunk cheeks and chip crumbs all over his face. It was exactly like that scene in cartoons where the cat eats the bird and there are bird feathers floating in the air.
30 more days?
3 comments:
I posted on your entry about the Seven Wonders (Terrors?)--noting that your kids reminded me of my 9th graders.
So, I am a firm believer in the power of the arts and as a result my kids get occasional crayon days to make artwork based on what we're reading. They have become much more occasional, however, since I was helping a student one day during 8th period and suddenly my kids on the other side of the room started screeching "EW" the way they do when we get a particularly large six-legged visitor. I turned around ready for roaches and realized that the "EWs" were resolving into half-whispers of "He ATE it!"
Yup. My friend, my fifteen year old friend (just checked ARIS), ate a pink crayon.
THIS IS WHY YOU CAN'T HAVE NICE THINGS, GUYS.
LOL and also, OY VEY. I was just reflecting today on how it's exhausting to say the same things over and over for an entire school year and still have kids not "get it" -- well, apparently, they keep on not getting it all the way up through high school :)
Oooh, you are so dead-on with your descriptions. I've been teaching over 20 years, and I recognize every one you're talking about!
I had a girl who once re-chewed some chewing gum she found spat out on the playground! EWWWW!
Keep up the good work. You've got the makings of a bestseller here!
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