Finals

Here we are at finals time already.  The quote on my blackboard reads: “The year seems short but the days go slowly by.”  (It’s The Shins if you didn’t already know that)  I’m so very bad at goodbyes, especially because I don’t really know how they feel about me.  Some students are really going to miss this class, others not so much.  So it’s strange to give a group goodbye that may fall on mostly deaf ears.  Along with that is the yearbook signings.  I do have mostly juniors, not all of them have yearbooks, but they want me to sign it.  It’s even worse this year because I won’t be at the school next year.  I never know what to say to students.  It’s gotta be appropriate obviously.  I want it to be good.  It takes me quite a while to figure these things out.  Yesterday a girl hands me her yearbook and on top of the page it says: Mr. ______’s Page.  A whole page?! I inserted 1/2  before page just to give me an out.  Then I was tasked with writing something.  It’s a morning class, so I wrote something to the effect of, “It’s a good thing I had you in the morning, I don’t if I could’ve handled you when you’re fully awake.”  Then I almost wrote, “it’s been fun waking up with you every morning.”  Then I thought about what that would look like on paper.  I mean, I was saying that we were both waking up during class and we were both tired in the morning, etc.  But still, I’m very grateful that I have a filter.  And I’ll keep the white out handy while writing these things.

One student bought be a wonderful Disney princess balloon that’s currently hanging in my room.  Don’t believe me?  Check out the picture!  This prompted the girl students to ask me what my favorite Disney movie is.  And it prompted the guy students to ask which princess I thought was the hottest.  The answer, obviously is Belle.

Belle is on the back. She's my favorite.

Go Ask Your Mother

I have two female students who like to conduct “social experiments.”  Basically they like to put people in strange situations and then see how they react.  Before they tried this on me, they were below-average students (D+ to C range).  One day they came to me asking if I would sign a letter of adoption so I could “officially” become one girls mother.  So, being the person I am, I signed it.  Then I signed one for the other girl.  Ever since then something strange happened.  They started to care about my class, ask questions and come for help.  Both have B+ to A averages and had the same last quarter.  They also keep me filled in on all the wacky stuff they do.  For a Mother’s Day gift, they made a family album, and it’s about the funniest thing I’ve ever received from a student.  I’ll post later with some specifics, but it’s complete with pictures they took off of Google and descriptions of all of the “extended family”.  At some point, I’ll also put up the “Official School Rules” they made for my classroom.

Last Friday I got one of the stranger questions I’ve ever been asked.  They were working on some classwork….

“Mr. _______, do you know what fellatio is?”
“Why are you talking about this?”

“Because somebody just told me, but I don’t believe them.  I thought it was just hugging.”

“No, whatever you heard is probably right.”

My first thought was, go ask your mother.  Then I overheard the girl, obviously proud that she now knows a new word, saying that another girl likes to “fellash” her boyfriend.  Awesome.

On that topic, here’s another little gem from last week’s edition of the school newspaper.  From a student editorial:

Sex is like math.  You add the bed, subtract the clothes, divide the legs and prey you don’t multiply.