It's a New Day

But the same old shenanigans...


One of my kids came in late today. I'm going to try to describe the awesomeness of this student, but I don't think I can really do him justice. He's the kid who always automatically puts his hands up in the air when you say his name, or look at him. He loves digging for glass and wants to do it as his profession when he's older. According to another teacher, he also breeds beta fish, although I have not confirmed this fact. He wears the same zip-up hoodie every day. Navy blue sweatshirt for life. The other day I asked him if he just had the one blue zip-up or if he had an entire closet of them. He said, with pride, that it was the same one every day. He told me he used to wear a different one, but that he had changed it up this year. I admire his commitment to the sweatshirt and am jealous of, what must be, a 5 minute morning routine. When he walked in late today he gave me this weird long story about how his mom hadn't woken him up because she thought he was sick, I think he had been sick over the weekend? Anyway, I was trying to ask him what his 4th period was to make sure he knew if his lunch was changing. He literally stared at me for 2 minutes trying to remember what class he had 4th period. Mind you, it's the semester. He's had the same class for 5 MONTHS. He finally said "You know, when you get sick you just get stupid. Like, I got sick and now I'm just dumb forever."

One of the other boys was really into saying "BOOM, you're roasted!" every time he made a joke to another student. He didn't really seem to get the point of a roast. He came up to me and said "hey, I saw your cat on my fence." I told him I didn't have a cat and he said "well, I don't have a fence! BOOM, ROASTED!" Another student was getting super frustrated that he wasn't using the term roasted correctly and kept trying to explain it to him. Naturally, this just made all of us (if you know me, you know I had to join in) use the phrase as much as possible. He finally saw justice when I made a joke to a student and he was able to yell it out. Victory.

We've also had a random selection of musical requests during work time lately. The last few days they've been really into requesting The Jackson 5. Today a boy requested Respect and then, while it was playing, yelled out to me "this is my jam!". Another student came up to me and showed me a CD he found while cleaning his room yesterday. It was this sweet 80s multiplication CD. Just think 80s music about multiplication facts. Yeah, it was amazing. We were all feeling it.

I had a new student in one of my blocks today who already knew some of the other boys. One of his friends told me to act super mean and yell out "What do you think you're doing? Get out the window!" and to light something on fire. I chose not to go that route. They also yelled out to him that I'm the meanest teacher in the entire school, which in middle school lingo means you're not. I took it as a compliment.