Bizarre nonsense student response of the day

While reading a story called, "Medicine: Past to Present" I asked, "Why did some Native Americans chew on willow tree bark?"

The response: "The Native Americans chewed on the tree bark because the bacteria told them to do it."

WHAT?

The correct response: It relieved pain.

My superior internet stalking skills get me what I want

Update: I got in touch with the high school teacher I was trying to reach. Here is is response to my email.

Absolutely you can call me M_ (first name). I am thrilled to hear of your starting out career choice and would love to hear more about it. Because my job is still based around education and their schedule, this is actually my slow time of year so I would love to get caught up over lunch or a cup of coffee. I am living in the Twin Cities still but no where near S__. However, since you will be visiting the family, I would be happy to make the trip down there and meet. Let me know what day, time, and location would work for and I will meet you there. Looking forward to catching up with you.
M__ V__ (aka [random nickname from high school] haven't used that in a while)

Now, when do I ask him about the discrepancy between his whitepages.com listing and his myspace profile. One lists him as married. The other as single. SCANDALOUS.

My Mindless Shopping (In honor of Ms. Mindless--my only blog reader)

I got two new tops today. Nothing special or otherwise exciting/unique. Both are intended as replacement items and are fairly basic. I am excited about the little white sweater though because my black sweater was starting to make my dresses look too harsh in the summer sun. White will lighten them up. Are these even showing up?

Does this make me some creepy stalker?

I am trying to reach a high school teacher of mine who no longer works at the school. We were close in high school and I looked up to him. My junior year, he decided to leave teaching. I remember him being conflicted about leaving the profession. When he left, I think he was only a year or two older than I am now. It would be so timely to get in touch with him and just vent/bitch our teaching experiences, but I have no contact information. My mom, who works in the school district still is going to see if she can get his email address for me. The issue...every email I draft sounds so creepy and when I ask to meet with him, in inevitably sounds like some sort of gross come-on. I need some feedback. Here was my last draft. What do you think? Again, I mean Ms. Mindless (because no one else reads this blog).


Dear Mr._ ,

How are you? I usually fish a little bit through my mom, who works in the S__ School District, but I haven’t heard anything about you in a while. Are you still with that company you started with after you left the classroom? Or perhaps you found your way back into the classroom?

I don’t know if you have heard, but I am a teacher. After college, I joined a program called Teach For America, which has brought me to teach in a horribly-managed, mold-ridden, emotionally-disturbed fourth-grade classroom in our nation’s capital. I am about to finish my first year teaching. I remember you were a little conflicted about your classroom experiences and ultimately decided to leave, sentiments to which I can truly relate. High school seems a million miles away, but I have been thinking about my whole high school experience from the perspective of the people who taught me. What the hell motivated them to come to work and put up with shit-brained teens all day? I now have a deep understanding that it surely wasn’t the pay. As my first year comes to a painful end, I would love to catch up and talk “teacher” sometime this summer. This rests on the assumption that you are still living in M_. I am living in D.C. now, but I will be back in M_ visiting my family from June __ to June __. Email me if you are available. Even if we cannot meet while I am home, I would still like to hear how you are doing.

Sincerely,

Ms. Oyster

Ladie's Night at the Ballpark

I went to my first National's game! Hopefully I will be able to post some photos once my friend gets me some copies. I love sports so I love watching them live. The trouble is, the boy doesn't so much like sports. It makes me feel way too butch around him to talk about sports since he really could not care less, but I'm into it. That's what other friends are for, right. I went with a friend of mine from Baltimore and plan to go again with some girlies in the D.C. region. My mindless is going to have to help me out with that one though. Here are the details.

Am I ready for a D.C. summer?

Some time back, there was a poll question in the Washington Post. Should metro make underground cell reception available. My knee-jerk reaction was, "Yes! Why wouldn't they?" I now know the answer. As a person who rides metro everyday, I have come to appreciate its quickness and its relative peacefulness (compared to the El in Chicago). In my mind, I thought yes, because I want to be able to reach someone if I am running late for work. On Friday, it became abundantly clear that some people would abuse this cell phone reception and turn the metro train into the level of hell that Dante forgot. These people are the D.C. summer interns. Riding on the metro with a Capitol Hill intern loudly blabbing away on her cell phone became the single most annoying thing I have experienced on Metro since August. And this says a lot considering I have seen all out brawls, I have been followed off the train and onto another train by a guy trying to flirt with me, I have been squashed in the doors and I have been subjected to the most obnoxious ipod play lists. Every other word was like, yeah, oh, ugh, blah, blah, blah. On top of that I had to listen to her blab about a hot guy at the office, her study abroad trip to Prague, and her opinions on D.C. so far. She even had a long conversation about what she buys with her dad's credit card. She was just in her own little world and was speaking so loudly that about six people around her were starting to get pretty mad. At one point we all jumped when she responded loudly with an, "Oh my god!" to something her friend said. After that, I couldn't hold it in. I just burst out laughing. She was sitting right next to me, and I just started laughing at her. The fabulous part is that the other people heard me, knew what I was laughing at, and joined in. The intern, was clueless. The bottom line is...

I am terrible at this...

I want to blog. I like to write. I waste a lot of time on the internet, yet never post. Hmmmm, this has got to change. I have "updates" but maybe I should just screw updates and stick with new material. I am never at a loss for topics as the instructional day alone provides me with enough material without even touching on the private life. I will be back this weekend and hopefully going strong. Obviously, I wasn't ready for a committment. Should I feel bad about that? I think not.

Special K Red Berries

So this was a post that could have written itself. In case you missed the boat, you need to know that Special K Red Berries is not only one of the most delicious cereals created by man, it is one of the most addicting--right down to the red berry "dust" at the bottom of the bag. If you eat the cereal you know about the "dust." You must also know that eating it dry is better than eating it with milk. I have gotten into this negative habit of eating while I am teaching, especially breakfast. I pack breakfast every morning, but somehow the students always sneak into my room before I've had a chance to eat it. Today, I finally paid the price for doing this. I breathed in a piece of cereal and basically started choking. It was not my most poised moment. A student, my beverage monitor which I will explain in a future post, ran out of the room to get me water. Talking was impossible for at least 30 minutes so we had a coloring contest, the opposite of standards-based instruction. Consider lesson not-learned because I plan on eating more of my cereal, probably in front of my class, on Monday.

Write about a time that you learned something new...

This was the prompt my students had on their DC-CAS Writing Composition Exam. I really wish I could have scanned all of their responses into my blog because some had me bursting out in laughter in the middle of the class. Some kids were annoyed that I was being so disruptive. Others, saw me laughing at someone's essay, took it as a good thing and then begged me to read theirs. They almost got me in trouble with the testing monitor. If there is one thing I have taught the crap out of this year, it has been writing. I don't even know why I chose it as an area of focus. Maybe it was that most of my students couldn't write a complete sentence, let alone an interesting sentence, at the beginning of the year. More likely though, I like teaching it. All of my students know how to put commas after transitions. Considering many adults have missed out on this skill, I think it is a huge success for nine-year olds.

Even though I couldn't scan in their interesting work, I did want to share with you a few of my favorite thesis statements. Here they go:

"One time when I learned something new was when I learned to trust my mom's new friend." (She is referring to her mother's new live-in boyfriend)

"At school I learned three new things in one day. I learned how to do reader's workshop, how to divide, and how to write a five paragraph essay." (I liked this one because the student was writing a five paragraph essay about how he learned to write a five paragraph essay and he genuinely didn't see the connection).

"I learned something new when my mom taught me how to braid." (This essay had me laughing out loud)

"In my first day of dance class I learned what to do when you feel embarrassed. " (This one also had me laughing out loud).

Quote of the day: "Ms. Reed, am I black?" This student did not know which ethnicity to bubble in on his score sheet. I thought it was great. We both laughed about it. And then he said, "I'm gonna mark them all." It will probably mess up the scran-tron, but I told him to go ahead if he wanted. Who am I to tell the kid what ethnicity he is?