A blog with no set theme. It's kinda like a box of chocolates; you never know what you're gonna get.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Out of the Mouths of [Semi] Babes

As most of you know, I'm a 7th grade math teacher. My kids are 12 and 13 years old with the occasional 14-year old hanging with us. This is an awkward time in their lives because while their bodies are maturing towards adulthood, their brains are not quite there. Here's a few statements that make me (a) laugh, (b) go, "Really?!?!", and (c) love my job! I ask God for an extreme amount of patience and a sense of humor everyday on my way to work. It's comments like these that let me know He's answering my prayers. Enjoy!   **This is a cumulative working list. I'll add as the school year progresses.....or until I forget about its existence.**

  • *Back-story: We have been talking about linear equations and lines in class. I told the kids they can remember that a horizontal line goes across from left to right because that's how the horizon is.*  A friend of mine moved to Hawaii recently. I was checking out her awesome pictures on Facebook and showed some snapshots of the landscape to two girls sitting near my desk. One said, "That's so pretty! I've been looking for the horizon here, but I can't find it. I can't wait until I see it. One time I saw the trees in the background and thought it was the Grand Canyon because they looked so big." (Not making this up or adding to it.)
  • The kids have been trying to figure out one of their classmate's middle name. They said he knew everyone in the room's middle name, but no one knew his. So I asked him what my middle name was. A student seated near my desk says, "Wait, is your real name not Miss Floyd?" I said, "Well Miss is not my first name. It's Jamie." She said, "So Floyd is not your middle name?" Nope. (This was one of those "Really?!?!?!" moments.
  • Question on Pre-Test given to students on the material they learned from last year:  23. What is the probability of rolling a number cube (dice) and it landing on an even number? Correct answer: 3/6 or 50% chance. Student's Answer: Most Likely.
  • When talking about my 25th birthday fastly approaching, a child shouts out, "Miss Floyd, don't worry. My uncle is 50 and he still has muscles!!"
  • After showing them a picture of a guy dressed up like Santa with a reindeer. "Miss Floyd, so Rudolph is for real? That story is true!?!?!" (So cute!)
  • I just want to eat, sleep, and be happy. And play X-box.
  • **When asked if he wanted to come back to school after the Christmas beak.** "I didn't want to come back to school. I walk too much here."
  • The assignment was to do numbers 1-12 displayed on the board. Sometimes you wonder.....
                                                     1, 2, 3, ........., 9, 10, 14


  • Our Thought for the Day today was "The only real disability in life is a bad attitude." When prompted with the question, "What is a disability?", this is the response I got. "A check in the mail." Now at first I thought the kid was kidding around, but no, he was 100% serious and thought that was what disability was. I said, "Well, yes, some people do get monitary support because of their disability, but that's not the actual disability. There are actually two different types of disabilities. Does anyone know what they are?" Response: "The check in the mail, and......hmmmm....maybe one you get handed to you."
  • Students were given 8 equations to solve. Marky Mark (not his real name) misses number two and makes a huge deal about it. When we finish calling out the answers to the 8 problems, I ask how many of them got a perfect score. Marky Mark raises his hand proudly and yells "Me!!". I remind him that he missed one. He says he still got a perfect score. Hmmmmm.
  • Child A is staring at Child B. I tell Child A to stop staring because no one likes to be stared at. Then I proceeded to stare at him. After about 20-30 seconds of staring, I asked Child A if he liked me staring at him. Child A responds, "Kind of." Hahaha, not the response I was going for.
  • "Miss Floyd, did you know that if you eat a mushroom five minutes before it blooms that you'll have eternal life?" (I was starting to get worried at the beginning of this question, but it didn't end the way I thought it would.)
  • Student waits until everyone leaves the room and comes up to me saying, "Miss Floyd, don't tell anybody, but you act just like my  mom. She makes up words just like that [I called him presh] and she dances around the house. Please don't tell her I told you though. I'm not supposed to tell people how she acts."
  • Back story: We usually listen to my Pandora station softly in my classroom. Unfortunately, they started blocking Pandora so I brought in an OLD clock radio that my parents gave me. It used to be my dad's alarm clock. I have no clue how old this thing is, but you can tell it's ancient. So I bring it in and it will only pick up local stations. The kids have been wanting to rotate the stations so we can have a variety of music genres. Real story: Child A: Miss Floyd, can we turn the radio to some rap? Me: No sir, it only picks up local stations so it's either this or country. Child B: Why does it only pick up local stations? Child A: Probably because it's so old. Child B: Miss Floyd, how old is that radio? Me: I'm not sure. I got it from my parents, but I can tell you this, it's really old. Child B: You should keep it until it stops working. Then it'll be even more old and you can sell it for a lot of money because it will be worth something some day. Me: That's a really good idea! Child A: What? I already know what you're going to be when you grow up. You gonna own a pawn shop. You gonna have a room full of junk thinking it's gonna make you some money.
  • Today after school, a student asked me why I wasn't working out today. I told him I was tired and didn't feel like it, but I was going to take my Pilate's mat home and do some over the weekend. He asked what Pilate's was so I got out my resistance band and showed him the "paint under the stairs" move that works the back of your arms. I said, "it's fun, isn't it?" His response: "Yes ma'am. Well, not really. I'd rather sit around and eat ice cream." My thoughts exactly. :)
  • I told one of my students, who is black, to "get to work, son." He looked at me, looked at his arm, and said, "I ain't mixed."
  • A student borrowed a pencil from me because he could not find his. He found it in his pocket about five minutes later. When he returned mine to me, I noticed he had a tiny pencil in his hand. I asked if that was his pencil. He confirmed that it was, indeed, the pencil he was planning to use. I asked he if was sure that he wanted to use that one instead of mine. He said yes. We spent the rest of the class waiting on him to catch up before we went to a new page of notes because he was having trouble writing with his pencil. Given another opportunity to borrow a pencil from me, he politely declined. I'll let you figure out which was my pencil and which was his.
TO BE CONTINUED....

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