Learn Me Gooder (18 page)
Authors: John Pearson
But Un’Kommon insisted, “NUH-UH!!! SHE’S A SINNER!!!!”
Apparently, the poor girl was not aware of an alternate meaning (and spelling) of the critical word that she had heard. Garden implement, dear child, NOT lady of ill repute.
I’m thinking someone needs to very carefully screen all stories for potentially inflammatory terms from now on. After all, a wise man once said that people’s lives are strongly influenced by what they do in third grade. I’d hate for any of our kids to grow up to be a hoe, a stud finder, or a tool of any sort for that matter.
Talk to you later,
The Scarlet Pimp-ernel.
When you start off your email with the sentence, “I myself have found a good use for a hoe on several occasions,” I have to wonder if I should be sharing Un’Kommon’s reaction. Larry bringing up TJ Hooker is pretty darn funny. I can only hope Un’Kommon doesn’t watch many old, crappy shows from the ‘80s.
I’ve noticed that one of my little girls, Priya, seems to have a particular fondness for corners. She obviously loves spending time in the corner of MY room, because she’s constantly doing things that land her there. Frequently when I pick the class up after lunch, Priya has her nose in the cafeteria corner. When I get the class from PE, she’s closely examining one corner of the gym.
Today when I saw Priya in the art room corner, I told Mr. Vann that I might need to help her write a brand new book that would showcase her unique interests. I suggested a Fodor’s-style travel guide, maybe “200 Classroom Corners in 175 Days.”
I’m sure that Priya would be able to provide some useful insights into which corners smell the best, which corners are most aesthetically pleasing, and which corners are most likely to provide habitats for creepy-crawlies.
Speaking of writing, the very last activity that we did today during after-school tutoring was a writing exercise, and I know that my brother Zack would appreciate this one. I passed out some leftover Spiderman valentine cards to the kids and told them to write a story based on the card’s picture. Misspellings aside, it was entertaining to read some of the kids’ stories and find that Spidey can fly, he can roundhouse kick people in the face a la Chuck Norris, and he likes to go around yelling, “I AM SPIDERMAN!” Just in case people don’t recognize him from the costume.
Big Jack had written a story about Spidey fighting a handful of “badgies.” Badgies (pronounced “Bad Guys” by the author; pronounced “Badgies” by all others) were a staple of my brother’s elementary school writing period. All stories followed a specific formula. Goodgies fight badgies. Badgies go to jail. End of story. Sometimes the setting varied (castle, big castle, red castle), but the plot always remained the same.
And really, Hollywood has followed suit. Die Hard on a plane. Die Hard on a mountain. Die Hard on Sharon Stone.
This was the first time I had seen Big Jack or any of my students writing about badgies. I won’t make any comments like, “Please stop writing the same story!” (actual note on my brother’s 7th or 8th paper) unless he recycles the plot a few times.
Thinking of notes in red on writing assignments makes me think back to my junior year chemistry class in high school. We had a standing weekly assignment to find and cut out a science-related article and to write a one-page summary.
It was well-documented that our teacher only glanced at the first sentence of the paper and gave grades based on that. So every week, my friends and I had a contest to see who could submit the wildest, most redonkulous papers.
A typical paper might read as follows:
“NASA has developed a new, innovative way to protect astronauts from over-exposure to UV radiation during manned space flights. This was never performed on monkeys when NASA shot Bozo the chimp up to the moon, but people are another case. My throat feels scratchy when I eat potato chips, and Vodka is a funny sounding word. Is my grandmother supposed to snicker when she breaks wind? Elizabeth Taylor kind of scares me, but my dad likes her. Dog food and horse doodles, I always say.”
And so on, and so on, for a full page. Every time, our papers would come back with a check plus.
It came as quite a shock when our chem teacher was fired over Christmas break that year (possibly related to his lax grading standards, though the rumor was always that he was caught in flagrante delicto with a senior cheerleader), and a new teacher arrived.
This new teacher kept the old assignment, and whereas MOST of us began to write an actual page-long review of our article, one of my best friends pushed his luck the first week and continued with a nonsensical review.
I’ll never forget how much red ink came back on his paper. Some of his sentences, like, “But there’s still one thing that puzzles me – there is no mention of the crown jewels!” were repeatedly circled and surrounded by question marks.
Man, I wonder if any of my teachers back then sat down every couple of nights and wrote a letter to a friend, telling them all about me and her other weirdo students.
Nah, my old teachers probably just drank themselves silly.
As for Big Jack and his badgies, I think I’ll write him a note encouraging him to serialize the adventures of his heroic protagonist. Maybe he’ll become a famous screenwriter who creates the next big epic tale (and twenty successful sequels), and someday I’ll get a call to play “Badgie Number 15.”
Later,
Scott Baio-Wolf
Sorry you’ve been sick for the past few days. I would think some of those badgies you work with would make anyone nauseous. Just be happy that you can call in sick without having to make plans or arrange for a replacement, like I do.
I wasn’t sick, but since my birthday fell on a Sunday this year, I decided to take yesterday off. It just so happens that yesterday was marked on the classroom calendar as President’s Day. So today, when the association was made between my birthday and the holiday, Jessie started up a rousing cheer of, “Vote for Mr. Woodson!”
Most of the other kids just stared at him as if his pants were on backwards.
This afternoon, I stayed late – too late – at school. I had taken up my students’ science journals to grade something they had written, and I didn’t want to lug all the journals home and back. What made my stay even later was that two of my former students came in asking if they could do anything to help me around the room.
I gave them a stack of homeworks that I hadn’t graded yet and an answer key. However, they seemed a lot more interested in talking, so there wasn’t a whole lot of grading going on.
The boys told me that a little girl in Mr. Redd’s class had been suspended for bringing alcohol to school. Naturally, I asked, “What kind of alcohol did she bring?”
One of the boys replied, “The white kind!”
And thus began the vocabulary lesson for the boys, as I rattled off a litany of possibilities, trying to hit on the white alcohol in question.
“Vodka? Rum? Everclear? Zima? Peach Schnapps? Triple Sec?”
Afterwards, I was glad they had not said someone brought drugs to school. I could see myself grilling the kids:
“Was it marijuana? Coke? Cheese? Heroine? Yellow jackets? Speedballs? Goofballs? Ludes? Shrooms? X? Spanish Fly? Spinach?”
I asked Mr. Redd about it later, and he told me that the alcohol in question was an airline travel-size bottle of Bacardi Rum. What Larry would call “Breakfast.”
Do you remember that time we flew out to the convention in Anaheim, and Larry drank so much on the flight that he was actually cut off? He had finished off two bottles of rum and was trying to order a third when the flight attendant told him no, adding, “Sir, it’s 10:30 in the morning.”
He had certainly been sober enough the night before, when he called the airline to reserve a kosher meal in my name.
Back to today, I may not have immediately guessed the contraband liquid in the afternoon, but earlier in the day, I was finally acknowledged as being smart. I mean REALLY smart. We’re talking Earth-shattering GENIUS here!
Well, at least according to my kids.
This morning, I picked my class up from art where Mr. Vann was waiting at the door. I reminded the kids that they should thank Mr. Vann for burning them all copies of the multiplication CD.
The kids thanked him and then started singing the 3’s song, with me singing right along. There’s a fun little ditty that lists all of the multiples – 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30.
By then, I was walking the kids down the hallway, and I added, “And don’t forget 33 and 36!”
Even though the songs stop at ten times the number, I test the kids up to twelve times the number since that’s what they’ll need to know for fourth grade.
As we walked, Tyler asked, “Mister Woodson, do you know 3 times one million?”
I said, “Yes, it’s 3 million.”
About five kids in line gave an awed, “WHOAAAAA” – the same sound uttered by a crowded stadium when Blake Griffin jumps over a car and delivers a tomahawk dunk.
Ava then asked, “Do you know SIX times one million??”
Warming to my audience, I replied with a flourish, “But of course – 6 million!”
By now there were murmurings in the line that I might be the second coming.
Felipe then pulled out his big guns. He asked, “Mister Woodson, do you know what is four… plus... three?”
I was a bit surprised by the simplicity of his question, but I replied, “Um, yeah, seven.”
“Oh yeah!!” Felipe exclaimed, with a beatific smile on his face, as if I had just told him the meaning of life, and it involved never having to read again and an endless supply of Hot Cheetos.
If I had had a magician’s smoke pellet, I could have thrown it down to the ground and disappeared to complete the grand act.
I suppose the lesson here is that I should focus on impressing the kids with my number sense, and not my knowledge of potent potables.
See ya,
Cal Q Later
Clearly you’re just jealous that you don’t have anyone in your life that is easily impressed by the ability to add single-digit numbers. Though you might try your luck showing off your division skills with Nancy up front. I hear she’s got a thing for math nerds.
If you weren’t just being sarcastic, I can certainly sing you the 3’s song next time I see you. I’ll warn you, however. Once you get it stuck in your head, that song will not go away. It’s more pervasive than the Smurfs theme song!
For the past couple of weeks in science, our smurfing topic of discussion has been producers, consumers, and food chains. When I first asked the class what a food chain was, Jacob said, “It’s where families go to eat on Valentine’s Day.”
Close, but no cigar. Not to be confused with FAST food chains, the regular run-of-the-mill type of food chains are those fun little paths that lead from producer to consumer. All chains start with a plant, followed by an animal that eats that plant, then an animal that eats THAT animal. A typical example might be as follows:
corn - chicken - person
It always takes me a while to convince my class that, in the science world, people are animals. Every year, there’s at least one smarty pants who argues, “Nuh-uh! People are MAMMALS!!”
I usually combat this by stooping to their level.
Me: “Is Victor a human being?”
Kids: “YES!!”
Me: “Nuh-uh! Victor is a BOY!!”
I’m all about developing those critical thinking skills.
The producer/consumer concept just throws more gas on the fire. The fact that animals – and thus humans – cannot make their own food is another stumbling block for the kids. I always get a chorus of arguments.
“I can TOO make my own food! I can make a turkey sandwich, and sometimes my mommy lets me make spaghettios!”
I think I’ll start showing Food Network videos in class, to highlight the difference between PRODUCING your food and PREPARING your food. Plants, and only plants, have the ability to create their own food through photosynthesis. My kids can slap a meal together, through a process I like to call dodosynthesis.
Anyway, last night, I gave an extra credit homework assignment which was to make and illustrate a food chain. I got some very interesting submissions. Here are a few proposed chains that we will not be seeing in nature anytime soon:
Corn - Lion - Shark
Unless it’s a land shark, of course. Candygram!
Bananas - Monkey - Ape
That would be cannibalism, kids, and that’s just wrong.
Apples - Horse - Me
At first, I thought she was saying she was hungry enough to eat a horse, but maybe she was making a reference to Jell-O?
Strawberry - Ferret - Fox - Brontosaurus
Silly kid! Now this is truly ridiculous. Brontosaurus is a PLANT eater!
Then there were several who just didn’t get the concept at all.
Dog - Food - Pedigree - Flea spray
Um, FOOD chain, my dear girl, not product line.
Fan - Air - Energy
Wow, a metaphysical food chain!
Dog food - Dog - Car
I asked about this, and the writer told me it was because cars hit dogs sometimes.
And my first annual winner of the “No Clue Chain” Award…
Banana - Corn - Soup - Tomato - Apple - Popcorn chicken
This was accompanied by a picture with the caption, “This is Eddie eating corn and tomato and banana.” Check plus for making a chain of food; check minus for comprehending the actual concept.
Quite obviously, this lesson falls under the heading – RETEACH!
Still, it did give me my favorite food chain of all time:
Strawberry - Squirrel - Snake - Chinese person
Nice integration of Science and Social Studies from Smoker Anna, a born overachiever.
After lunch (during which time the kids fulfilled their role as top of the food chain), I received a formal observation. Once or twice a year, Mrs. Forest or Ms. Zapata comes and sits in on the class for 30-45 minutes. This is part of our yearly evaluation, but it always makes me nervous. Not that I have anything to hide – I’m always very careful to meticulously hide the weapons of math destruction – but I hate speaking in front of adults. Throw me in front of a thousand kids and I’m fine, but add a grown-up or two to the mix, and I suffer a massive anxiety attack. You may remember the deep shade of fire engine I always turned when asked to give my status update at production meetings.
