Golden Nuggest

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Here are a few golden nuggets from random conversations that have occurred in my classroom recently.

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Student: Miss Lewis, have you ever seen the movie Stepbrothers?

Me: Funny you should ask because I have never seen it. I started to watch it on Saturday but never finished it. It was pretty stupid. It was funny, but I could actually feel myself getting dumber as I watched it.

Student: Really? You're gonna play that card? You're around us 8^th graders all day. What could make you feel dumber than that?

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I over heard this little gem while I was on the other side of the room entering my attendance.

Student: When I grow up, I’m going to be the sexiest man alive. You know it. The day I was born, was the day the world started breathing. I got it all. What don’t I have? I’m gonna be on stage rockin' my guitar with leather chaps and my big ‘ol happy trail. I’m gonna wear that everywhere I go.

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This morning, I decided to play a little joke on my students.

Me: So class. I was talking to Miss Smith next door and she told me that she was going to get some posters for her room. She also told me that some of you had the nerve to say, “Just as long as they’re not Justin Bieber posters like Miss Lewis has.” How dare you? That makes me think you don’t appreciate the things I do for you. I spend my own money to try to make this room look nice and student friendly and you criticize the way I do it?

Students: Look down at their desks tops not speaking.

Me: Setting a cardboard poster tube on the table. So this weekend, I went to every Walmart, every F.Y.E. and every Hot Topic and I bought every single Justin Bieber poster I could find. Look out kids because this room is about to get Bieberized. Starting with this gem… I stand back to unroll... the Official Hunger Games movie poster.

One student mumbled under his breath, "Oh my God. I think half the class just had a nerdgasm." Seriously? Where do these kids get this stuff

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A couple of weeks ago, while playing a game of Scattergories, the letter was “P” and one of the items on the list was “personality traits.” We went around the room and teams shouted out their answers.

Student 1: Patient

Student 2: Persistent

Student 3: Polite

Student 4: Ours is double points. A people pleaser.

Me: That’s really good. All of your answers are good.

Student 4: (muttering to his classmates) Yep, I please you for $3.99 an hour.

Me: Really?

Student 4: Ummm... ummm...

Me: $3.99 an hour? You’re cheap.

Student 4: (chuckling) Oh. I thought I was going to be in trouble.

Me: Well, it sounds like you're already in enough trouble if you’re only charging $3.99 an hour.

Student 4: Miss Lewis…

Me: What? I’m just saying, your services must not be very good.

Holy Haunted House

To cushion the blow of making my students take a test, for the third time this week, I decided to read aloud a chapter from The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. We got to the part where Katniss Everdeen is saying her final farewells, before being sent off to compete in the Hunger Games (a fight to the death on live TV). Her best friend Gale is advising her to get her hands on a bow and arrow because she is a skilled hunter and he knows it might give her a chance.

“Listen,” he says. “Getting a knife should be pretty easy, but you’ve
got to get your hands on a bow. That’s your best chance.”

“They don’t always have bows,” I say, thinking of the year there were
only horrible spiked maces that the tributes had to bludgeon one another
to death with.”

At this point, I asked the class if they know what a mace is and the following discussion transpired:

Student 1: “Isn’t that what you spray in people’s eyes when you get mugged?”

Me: “You’re thinking of mace, like pepper spray, but the sentence uses the word ‘bludgeon’ so in this case, they are referring to a different kind of ‘mace’ or weapon.

I am greeted with blank stares.

Me: “You may have seen a mace in the Capital One commercials with the Vikings. A mace has a wooden or metal handle with a chain on one end. At the end of the chain is a metal ball with spikes on it, and you swing it around really hard and slam down.”

Student 2: “Oh yeah. They used one of those when they killed Jesus in that movie.”

Me: “I know what you’re thinking of, but that was more like a whip. You’re right, though, that weapon was spiked on the end, but a mace is used more for smashing.”

A couple of girls are suddenly really eager to tell share what’s on their minds:

Girl 1: “Oh that was insane. They killed that Jesus guy.” (She starts to move around in her desk, pantomiming to better explain herself.) “They put a spike through this wrist, then that one, so he wouldn’t fall off of his cross.”

Girl 2: “We learned all about it. They put spiky things on him…”

Girl 1: “It was a crown of thorns. Then they whipped him and stabbed him while he was still alive. Then they made him drag his heavy cross through the town and he was all bloody.”

Girl 1: “It was really crazy.”

Girl 2: “Did you know that’s how he died?”

Me: “The story does sounds a little bit familiar. Where did you find out about this?”

Girl 2: “Up the street last Halloween in a haunted house. It was really scary.”