All in a day's work - 2006-07-11 07:29
As you may know by now, I am teaching summer school. It is a boring ordeal, but every now and then my students give me something to chuckle about. I am walking around the room, re-teaching how to find the area and perimeter of a triangle and a trapezoid (trapezium for you Brits). Mind you, they learned this (okay, it was taught to them, perhaps not learned) last year (1st time), I just stood in front of the class ten minutes ago teaching the concept again (2nd time), and am now walking around, teaching it one-on-one (3rd time). For you non-teachers, this “who-am-I-teaching-this-to feeling” is a very common and frustrating one.
While I am walking around the classroom, bestowing knowledge yet again, I notice one of my students sitting on the floor beside her chair. She is probably one of my favorite students in the class because of her fun-loving attitude, so seeing her there makes me snicker to myself. Her legs are beneath the black sweatshirt she is wearing, knees tucked up to her chest as if she is sitting outside in December. The hood of her sweatshirt is over her head, and she has those huge white Willy Wonka (Depp, not Wilder) sunglasses on her thirteen-year old face. Keeping with Wonka, an Oompa Loompa isn’t that much of a strectch for the vision in front of me.
“So… what’s up?” I ask. This is a common question when I happen across something that makes me quirk my head to the side.
“I fell out of my seat like a drunken mel-ih-key.” She replies while giggling quietly.
“You fell out of your seat like a drunken pelican?” I question incredulously.
“Pelican? No! I fell out of my seat like a drunken Teletubby! ”
“Oh… I see. Much better. Get back in your seat.”
Great story…. not at all unbelieveable in today’s classrooms…. still surprising nonetheless. Keep writing.
Found you from your msg about WoW and decided to come check out your site.
I’m confused, was the chick drunk in class?
I guess it’s not that hard to believe, seeing as it’s summer school and all.
Sadly, no. Okay, not sadly. It's good she isn't drinking at the age of thirteen. But it sure would be easier to understand why she was falling out of her seat if she were inebriated. She just fell out of her seat. No explanation. Thankfully she had learned about similies in her 7th grade English class and knew to tell me that she fell out of her seat like a drunk Teletubby… It isn’t all that uncommon to have a student fall out of their seat. Once. More than that, and there will be issues with me…