Valley Reality

So we had some bad weather in the area today, and I reminded my kids what we do for a tornado drill...

Mr. H: There's some bad weather in the valley today, so if there's a tornado warning, we go in the hall and sit facing the wall.

7th Grade Student: Mr. H, you know how where we live, they call it the Tennessee valley and the heart of the valley?

Mr. H: Yes...

7th Grade Student: Where's the hidden valley?

Mr. H: Really?

7th Grade Student: That's not a real place, is it?

Mr. H: No.

New Animals, Etc.

So this came from Mr. Poop's classroom. He is a geography teacher, who apparently began talking about Africa in class recently. This came from the middle school mind/mouth:

Mr. Poop's Powerpoint: Africa has a lot of animals; lions, elephants, hippos, etc.

7th Grader: Mr. Poop, what's type of animal is an etc.?

Temporarily Permanent

While in class yesterday, a student got the wild hair to put chalk dust from the chalk tray on his face.

Mr. H: Why did you put chalk on your face?

7th Grader: I wanted to look like a football player.

(I now feel compelled to tell you that this student is male, about 4 feet tall, and weighs in at about 75 pounds.)

Mr. H: Ok, I guess.

7th Grader: Mr. H, is this chalk permanent?

A HA!

Ok. So, today class was about the census. While discussing how a country's population can grow, we talked about how the number of people born vs. the number of people dying equals either an increase or decrease in your population. This was a difficult concept for most of my students to get, thus making me reteach this over and over again. Finally, one of my students got it and you could almost see the light bulb come on in his head. Next:

Mr. H: Wow, it's like the room got brighter back here. (The students looked at me not getting my obvious reference to the light bulb) You know, like the light bulb came on in his head...like in the cartoons.

7th graders (almost in unison): Oh!

Mr. H: Ok, glad you got that. (The class then continues for a few minutes..then this happens)

7th grade student: Mr. H, do we really have a light bulb in our head?

Ailments

Well, we're back to school after a holiday break and basically a week off of school for snow/MLK day. Today, we were reading the newspaper in class. When the students were finished reading, they were to write a review of an article and then fold their papers back up. I had one student that didn't exactly jump on the whole fold your newspaper back up bandwagon. This is what happened:

Mr. H: Ok 7th grader, fold your newspaper up.

7th Grader: I can't...I'm claustrophobic.

Mr. H: What does that have to do with folding your paper?

7th Grader: Oh, I mean I've got arthritis.

Culturally Illiterate

Well, my classes were in the library today doing some research on the Presidents...I was explaining to them that if you're looking in an encyclopedia, you search by a person's last name. Then this happened:

7th grade student: What is Obama's last name?

Mr. H: Obama.

Poor vs. Poe

Ms Manuscript used the daily grammar warm-up to introduce the readings of Edgar Allen Poe. After students had offered the various corrections in capitalization, punctuation and word usage, everyone decided all of the errors had been identified, when one student timidly raised her hand.

Ms. M: Yes?

8th Grade Student: There is one more correction Ms. M.

A bit perplexed, Ms. M waited a moment and then asked what remaining correction was needed.

8th Grade Student: You need a verb - it should be Edgar Allen was Poe, you can't say he was poe without a verb.

really... yes, really!