We were not supposed to have a Drama Club meeting after school today because of a staff meeting, but then my meeting got canceled and I told the kids, “You can come if you want to, but if you have something else to do you won’t be marked absent.”  All but one of my Drama Club students showed up.  I could not believe it.  So we did improv, per their request, and I spent the next 45 minutes laughing hysterically at them being goofballs on stage, and sharing inside jokes from our UIL competition adventures together.  Then it came time to go and they didn’t want to leave.  I literally had students begging me to let them do more improvs, so we stayed another 15 minutes until I had to kick them out so I could get some things done before heading home.

As they walked out the door in hysterical laughter I noticed that the fun I was witnessing was not between the kids, but between the kids and me. They included me in their fun, in their jokes, in their laughter.  They didn’t have to.  I make a positive difference in their lives.  Forget about that child’s parents who can’t accept their daughter could do anything wrong.  That girl can come into my class and pout and call me names behind my back all she wants to for the next 16 days of school (16 DAYS!!!!).  Why should I let one child and her irrational parents determine my future as a teacher?

How is it that one dark cloud can overshadow every other wonderful moment you have as a teacher?  I have to remind myself to bottle those rays of sunshine, so when the clouds come through I can just let them pass and get to the sunshine again.

Photo courtesy of vibroacoustic.com

(No, that’s not the “Kids Say the Darndest Things” part, believe it or not.)

Bachelor #1′s response: “It depends on if she’s dead or not.”

‘Nuf said, people!

EW EW EW EW EW EW EW EW!!!!

I very calmly and rationally gathered up all the class and professionalism I could muster and said, “OMIGOD!  NO WAY!  I want you to GET OUT!!!!”

Ummmmmm….  Thanks??

I am the fifth teacher to announce her pregnancy within a month.  So when I shared my news with the class, Denise (one of my most vocal students, of course) blurted out, “You teachers need to learn to control yourselves!!”

Ack!  Ummmmm….  New topic, new topic, new topic, new topic!

I have had a cold for the past week and I am very “phlegm-y.”  As I was talking to the class about their assignment (after saying “I need all eyes on me so I know you are hearing me,” of course), a HUGE wad of phlegm flew up my throat and fell out of my mouth onto my chin. 

I am not kidding. 

I have no idea how it happened so fast, but I quickly threw my hand up there to catch it and put it back into my mouth.  OK, so that is even more disgusting!  But what was I supposed to do?!?  I couldn’t stop, walk across the room with phlegm on my chin and grab a kleenex to wipe it off.  I was praying in that moment nobody noticed.

I wasn’t so lucky.

I actually made one student gag.  Another student asked, “Ms. Alexander, was that gum?”  I thought to myself, “Ooh, yes!  Gum!  That is much less disgusting!”  But I was torn.  I could say it was gum, but I am the gum NAZI.  I hate gum.  I preach about it all the time and I am a hound dog when it comes to catching my kids with gum.  What kind of hypocrite would I be if it had been gum?  Do I say it was gum and then lose that respect?  But then again, I can’t say… “NO, it wasn’t GUM!  It was PHLEGM!”  So I just chose to keep on talking and pray they dropped the subject.

They did, but I’m sure it will be one of the stories they tell 10 years later….  “I once had a teacher who hacked phlegm all over herself.”  Eeewwwwwww!!

• “Game!  G-A-M, Game!”
• “Century!  C-E-N-T-R-E-E, Century!”

And that’s all I have to say about that.  I’m calling their English teachers.

I once made a joke to a friend of mine that the reason I like teaching middle school so much is that I get to be myself, because I really am a dorky middle school kid at heart.  After I made the joke I thought to myself, “Wait, that might actually be true!”

So I was dramatically twisting myself in knots around the front of my room the other day, acting like a big dork while trying to get my LCD remote to get a signal to my laptop, when one of my students said it best:

“Ms. Alexander, are you half kid or something?”

Hmmmmm….

I think I am!  *snort*  Ha ha!

It was first thing in the morning, and my first period kids were filtering into my classroom.  Jessica, one of my “theatre is my LIFE” students, walked up to me and very dramatically said, “Ms. Alexander, I think I am going to DIE.”  I said, “Why?” and she told me this little story of how her grandma drove her to school that morning, and when they pulled up to the front of the school she noticed her granddaughter was wearing flip-flops.  Since flip-flops are not allowed in school her grandma gave her some of her own shoes to wear that she had in the car.

“Ms. Alexander…. LOOK.”  She pointed down to her feet and my eyes followed her.  They were the most hideous pair of old lady tennis shoes I had ever seen in my life.  I felt for the girl, I really did.  I had actually brought some tennis shoes to school with me that day so I could change before the football game that evening, so I offered to loan her mine for the day.  She said, “OMG, YES!” and we walked over to my desk.  I pulled them out and she stopped, looked at them, looked up at me with a blank expression, and after what seemed like the longest pause ever, said….

“Ms. Alexander, those are like the same!”

I gasped in horror and she tried to save herself but I just said, “Get out!  There’s no turning back from that!”  We had a good laugh over it, but now I’ll never look at those tennis shoes the same way again.  It’s time to go shopping.

I told the kids that I would not be putting the book’s definitions on the test.  It freaked some of them out, because of course they want the “right” answer and I couldn’t give them that.  They actually had to listen to what I was saying and take notes.  I had them get into groups and rewrite the definitions in their own words and all that.

Later in the week I came up with a little review activity where they had to match the words to the definitions in a relay race.  The thing was, I put all the definitions in my own words.  As I was working on them at home I told my husband what I was doing and he said, “Wow, that’s higher level thinking.  Are middle school kids capable of that?”  I was like, “Heck YES they are!” but then started doubting my quest a little bit.

The next day we did the activity and I was thrilled because the kids were getting it, and they thought it was pretty easy, too!  I was so proud that before they left my classroom I gave them a little speech and let them know what my husband said, and that I couldn’t wait to go home and say “I told ya so!”  I then talked about how amazing their brains were because it really was a higher level thinking task, and the fact they thought it wasn’t that hard made it even more impressive, because that told me they had really learned it.  The class “Awww’d” and clapped for themselves, and then Jordan in the back raised his hand with a worried look on his face.

“Does this mean you’re going to start expecting more from us?”