Adventures in Teaching

I played the best April Fool's Day joke on my students. Whenever we have a test we rearrange the desks (to make it harder to cheat). The next class coming in takes this as their reminder that there is a test. The catch is when my Geometry students come in after a Pre-Algebra test: they take a look at the desks, look at me, and ask, "Is there a test today?" So I decided April 1st was a good day to use this as a joke (I usually don't play tricks on my students). I had my Pre-Algebra students rearrange the desks to look like there was a test. My Geometry students came in the next period, looked around, and asked, "Pre-Algebra had a test, right?" I did my best to convince them their test was that day (feeling horrible about lying, but trying hard to keep a straight face), until I would finally start laughing and they knew I was teasing them. I told them they now had to help me convince the next kids who came in that the test was that day. They really had fun with it. (However, if they had really been paying attention, they would have noticed that the day's lesson was on the board, so there obviously wasn't a test!) Finally, when the bell rang and class really started I announced it was an April Fool's Day joke. I heard a huge sigh of relief and watched a few kids put their notes away (they had been studying!). They didn't even really hold it against me!

While I'm telling teaching stories, here are a few hilarious conversations I've had recently:
Student to me: Do I need to keep these papers, or are they critical to my salvation?
Me: Ummm... I don't think anything in this class is critical to your salvation. Except being responsible, that's definitely important! Why don't you put them in your folder?

Here's another one:
Student: I'm really tired!
Me: I'm sorry. Why didn't you get enough sleep last night?
Student: Well, I slept on the floor.
Me: Why did you sleep on the floor?
Student: I fell out of bed and it was too hard to get back in bed.

Yeah, this was a ninth grader. That's one thing I love about teaching - the kids keep me on my toes and we definitely keep one another entertained!

More adventures in teaching...

I sure enjoyed my Christmas break from school. I'll confess, I dreaded going back (who wouldn't enjoy vacation?), but after only one week I'm totally back in the swing of things. Last Friday (Fridays are always interesting in junior high!) in Pre-Algebra we were working on writing equations from words (for example, "The sum of x and five equals 4." would be x + 5 = 4). At the very end, I challenged them to write their own word problem/story for "h - 28 = 32." To help them brainstorm we talked about what "h" could be (horses, houses, hippies, hippopotamus (whatever the plural of that is!), etc.). We were all laughing by the time we were done! Here were some of their creations (the last is my favorite):

"The horse rancher had some horses. He lost 29 off a cliff, but one survived. If 32 survived, how many did he have originally?"

"Heffelump the Heffelump lost 28 pets. He now has 32. How many pets did he have?"

"There were hobos. 28 of them died, so now there's 32 left. How many were there?"

"There were a bunch of hippies at a party. 28 of them left. Now there are 32. How many were at the party?"

"There were some hobos riding hippos. 28 got stomped on. Now there are 32 left. How many are there."

I suppose if you're looking for Dave Barry creations, you've come to the wrong place, but after a long day of solving math problems, I guess it's easy to find things to laugh at! Oh, and the most ironic part was that I didn't ask them to solve the problem and some kids were dying to tell me the answer! I love junior high (on good days)!