I.T. to Teacher

I've heard a lot about this MySpace thing. The students all have one, and I heard some teachers talking about it, so I figured I'd go check it out.

I've been to MySpace before. I checked it out when it was new, and not yet the cool thing to do. Looking at it then I thought it was on par with Geocities of the late '90's; lots of people making "Look at me, I'm on the internet!" pages. Since it's so popular now, I thought it must have changed.

Nope.

MySpace is a vast wasteland on the internet. There are a few highlights (Weird Al's site being one example), but those are heavily customized by professionals and far from the typical MySpace fare. What is common are vanity sites that all look the same. I've heard that kids see their MySpace page as a place where they can express themselves. If that's true, then they either don't have anything to express or are too lazy to express it.

Enough about MySpace. It doesn't matter. MySpace is sooo 5 minutes ago. Facebook is where all the cool kids are hanging out now.

When I inquired as to why she wasn't working on her lab...
"She made me do it, Mr .... Peer pressure, it works!"

This one was with a freshman study hall student and I:
Student: What is incest?
Me: Uhhhh.... (eek!)
S: It's on my homework.
Me: Let me see the question. (This ought to be good)
S: Is it doing something that you don't want to do?
Me: Yes, but not specifically. (Trying to come up with something here)
S: Is it rape?
Me: It can be, but that's not the definition. (Dang, they just took my dictionaries away, too)
S: ...
Me: It's like when a dad has sex with his daughter. The whole family kind of thing. (Just what I was trying to work my way around)
S: Oh. (I don't think he saw that one coming)

Two girls are working on a lab. One turns to the other and says:
1: How do you say "oyster"? (saying it correctly, by the way)
2: Oyster? (Saying it the same way)
1: Oyster.
2: Oyster. (Answering the original question)
1: Is that right?
2: Yes?
1: That's what I told them. (and turns back to their lab)

A student of mine informed me that he wasn't going to be in our next class. I asked him why, and he responded that he wouldn't be at school for a few days. Ah, suspension. This is an unusual occurrence for my students so I asked him why. It turns out that he played a prank in another class.

As class was starting he made a big show of leaning his head on his hand and complaining about how tired he was. He even asked to go to the nurse because he was so tired. The teacher refused, of course. When the teacher turned around he let his head slip and hit his forehead on the desk. He didn't hit it hard, and supplemented the sound by a simultaneous slap on the desk (Rob, I thought of you here). Had that been all, he probably wouldn't have gotten in trouble. He decided that wasn't enough, and was ready with some fake blood that he smeared on his forehead. Now, he says the teacher was still cool with this, merely tossing a Kleenex at him and telling him to clean it up. If that's true, and he had stopped here, he might not have gotten in trouble. However, he had a friend video this and put it on YouTube. That's what really got him in trouble.

He said he thought about doing it in my class. I don't think I would have turned him in, but I only have his story so who knows what really happened.

I gained a new appreciation for teaching juniors and seniors, and my juniors and seniors in particular.

One of our freshman/sophomore biology teachers had to leave school early to pick her kid up early from school. While she was gone three teachers each covered 20 minutes of her class. I got tapped for the last 20 minutes.

When I arrived, our department head was very worried and told me that there was a student in the room on drugs. She went through a litany about how she couldn't get in touch with anyone to come help, and she finally had to push the panic button, but they still hadn't come... and on and on like that. I looked around and didn't see anything unusual, no one out of their seat, no one freaking out (besides my dc), so I wasn't concerned. Shortly, a principle came and removed the student from class. I heard he ended up in juvy.

After things calmed down a guy at the front of the room started accusing a girl at the back of the room of doing drugs, too. She said she didn't ("Look at my pupils, not dilated!"), he said he saw her, blah, blah, blah. They're not calming down, he's not shutting up. The guy, the girl, and another girl (on the first girl's side) pop up, push their desks out of the way, and start yelling at each other. I step in the middle of this, yell at the guy and girl to sit down, and yell at the new girl to stay out of it (which she does). They eventually calm down, but the guy just won't shut up. About this time the teacher comes back. I tell her what's going on, and she has me take the guy and girl to the office. Done, and done.

I found out later that after school the guy got his girlfriend and went to have her beat up the girl from class (classy). Turns out the girl from class had a girlfriend, too. The two girlfriends went at it and the guy's girlfriend was the one who ended up getting the beating.

Makes me appreciate the problems I have in my classes. "Why do I have a B?" "When can we get our tests back?" "Is there anything I can do for extra credit?" "Why did I get this wrong?"

Yeah, I have it rough.

My vaunted immune system has failed me.

I've always been the type of person who never gets sick, and never takes medicine. I knew that system was bound to fail now that I'm constantly around hundreds of germ sponges every day, but I still had hope it wouldn't. For the past month, though, I've been almost constantly sort-of sick. Never anything really bad that would warrant taking a day off; just enough that I all I want to do is go to sleep. Granted, some of that sleep-lust may be due to my 6 hour a night habit (getting longer, fortunately), but a big part is my body telling me it needs sleep to get better. There were a few days where I was Day-Quil'd up during the day, and Ny-Quil'd down at night. I even went to the store and successfully navigated the scavenger hunt to be treated like a junkie to buy decongestant (who knew it was behind the counter?). After all that, the darn decongestant didn't work. Shoving the pills up my nose might have cleared my sinuses better than swallowing them did. Ugh.

I'm finally on the upswing. I still have a headache, still tired, still coughing, but I have a voice, my nose isn't vacillating between streaming mucus and nonexistent airways, and I'm generally feeling pretty ok. The voice thing was probably the worst. There were two days where I couldn't talk above normal conversational levels. I told my students that they needed to know what I was going to tell them, but I couldn't speak very loud. If they were talking over me I was just going to keep on going. Fortunately, my students are good enough that the classes were pretty self-correcting. Of course, one of those days I subbed for another class and almost had a fight in the classroom. That's another story.