"Tuesdays Gone" hop

One of the things I miss most about teaching is interacting with the kids and the hilarious things they say sometimes.  For this "Tuesdays Gone: Breathing New Life into Old Posts" entry, I thought I'd bring back some of my favorite moments from last year:



I'm on the market  4/15/10
S, one of my 2nd-graders, has been asking me the past 2-3 weeks to give her a picture of me. I kept putting her off, hoping she'd forget, but she didn't, so the other day I gave her one of me at J&A's house, B. on my lap, he and I are looking at my dominoes and Z. is next to us with his dominoes. I assumed she was going to make me a card or something. She never said what she was going to do. Today, her classroom teacher told me she had put my pic on paper and drew a circle around it with lines coming from the center, like spokes on a wheel, and each line had a word or phrase:

"Miss Kerri"
"nice"
"sweet"
blah blah - I can't remember the others except:
"41 years old"
"needs a husband"

Now I'm waiting to see copies of the flyer posted all over school.



. ? !  3/9/10
Conversation with R. this a.m., who is 9 years old and more artistically gifted than I - I asked her to draw/write a cartoon that used the 3 punctuation marks . ? and ! I hastily sketched her an example to show her what I meant; turns out, I could have just recorded our conversation:

R: "Is that a chicken?"
me: "It's a person."
"Why does he have a beak?"
"That's his nose."
"What's wrong with him?"
"Nothing!"
"Where's the dog's nose? Do you want me to help you?"
"No!"



Lessons learned 12/3/09
When R. (one of my private, 4th-grade students) wants to give you "joy dots," marker dotted on your hand so that you have a good day, and she wants to give you LOTS of dots, don't choose red. Otherwise people will think you have a disease.

What not to say to a roomful of African-American students, even if you're just talking about markers: "The black ones smell, the white ones don't." (Got a great fake look of shock and then a smile.)

What not to say to your teacher:
"Those red dots match the ones on your face."

After she's ended a horrific class with the previous group, in terms of behavior (theirs, not mine) (I think), even when she admitted she'd been acting like the bad witch: "You're acting like the good witch now." "But I'm still a witch?" "Yeah."

How not to conduct a timed assessment: Start the timer and say "go" without giving the student the directions. "WAIT! WHAT ARE WE DOING?!"



My new bra  11/5/09
My students are writing/drawing something they're thankful for to put on posterboard in the hallway this month, and I had the 3rd-graders begin with that. Two of them said they're thankful for me (ha! I knew I could manipulate them!) :) and one said when he was done, "Miss Kerri, I drew a bra on your head." Shocked silence for a moment from me and the other 3 boys. "You drew a what on my head?" I asked. "A bra." "A bra?!" (Giggles now from the other boys.) "Yes, a bra." "A bra? Why did you draw a bra on my head?" "A bra! I drew you a bra." "A braaaaa?" (enunciating the phonetics, always teaching...) "Yes, a bra! That thing girls put in their hair and tie up! What is going on?!!!" (boys laughing now) I said, "Do you mean a b-o-w?" and held up a picture of one we happened to have on the wall. "Yes, that thing. What's a bra?" "Ask your mother," I said. One boy said, "I'll tell him," and went and whispered into the 1st boy's ear. 1st boy's response: "OOOOHHH! WHOA!!! YUCK!!! No no no no no no no....!"