Or the author really liked to time travel?

Yesterday was graduation, but as a send off to my juniors, here's one last story in their honor. The last book we read this year was Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. The book is about a girl and her adventures in the South during the summer of 1964. When we were finished, I let the kids watch the movie, was came out two years ago. Right after we started the movie, a kid noted the following...

Boy: Whoa!
Me: What?
Boy: I totally expected this movie to be from, like, the 70s!
Me: Uh, what?! The book was written in 2002!
Boy: It was?! I thought it was written in, like, the 40s!
Me: It starts in the summer of 1964! And it talks about space exploration and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and the Vietnam War!! Did you think the author was psychic or something?
Kid: Oh, good point.
Girl next to him, deadpan: You're a moron.
Me: Twice.

Maybe in the futrue there will also be "Barack Obama Times"?

Also, according to third graders, there were two periods of Civil Rights: "Martin Luther King Times" and "Civil War Times". One came right after the other. Thanks history!

Third grade sounds really hard!!

A friend of mine teaches third grade and her stories always remind me that it's not only teenagers who are ridiculous. Recently the second graders came around to the third grade classrooms to meet the teachers and to ask questions about their upcoming year...

Kid #1: I heard in third grade there is homework every night!!
Teacher: That's true. There will be homework every night.
Kid #1: Like a page?
Teacher: Maybe a few pages in two subjects.
Kid #1: What's a subject?

Kid #2: I heard in third grade you have to learn multiplication AND you have to be able to SPELL multiplication!
Teacher: Yes, that's true.
Kid #2: I can spell that already! M-U-L-T...
Teacher: What's 2 times 3?
Kid #2 looks blankly at her.
Teacher: It's OK, you'll learn that in third grade.
Kid #2: ...I-P-L-I-C-A-T-I-O-N!

The post office is very progressive, you know.

In reviewing for finals in an American lit class, one of my coworkers had this enlightening conversation...

Girl: So, post-modernism...
Teacher: Yes?
Girl: Post means "after", right?
Teacher: Yes, so post-modernism came after modernism.
Girl: OK, but, like, what about post office and post-it? How does that even make sense?!
Teacher: Oh god.

Or maybe his mind was elsewhere...

A kid was whining about how he didn't do one writing assignment and it dropped his grade. It was a super easy creative writing, yet he thought it was difficult. Or maybe it's because he was focused on something else?

His excuse: "I just couldn't do it! It was too hard! I had to be all deep. It was too hard and too deep! Wait...uh..."

[Explosions of giggles from 17 year old boys around him.]

Me, trying my hardest not to laugh (because I'm not so secretly a 15 year old boy: "Sounds like you have a real, uh, problem there. Moving on!!"

I gotta go now...

My specialty is dealing with awkward conversations. Mostly my reaction to them is a "no..." and a "I gotta go...". For example:

Girl: M, you should come shop at JC Penny's! I work there! In the lingerie department! Come buy stuff!
Me: Um, I'm not going to do that for many reasons, most of which I'm not going to expound on.
Girl: But...
Me: NO. I'm not buying my under...things from you. Ever.
Girl: OK, fine...

They wanted to name it Fawkes, but Phoenix sounded less dirty.

From a friend who teaches freshman:

"We discussed the symbolic significance of the phoenix and how J.K. Rowling used that mythology in Harry Potter, which led a kid to ask...

'Wait, so the city of Phoenix is named after a Harry Potter character?'"

Yeah. Totally.

Sarcasm: 1, Niceties: 0

A student just informed me that finding quotes in the book we're reading is "the hardest thing [he's] ever had to do".

The kid next to him just looked at him and said, "Wow, sounds like your life is really hard."

I've trained my kids well in my ways of sarcasm.

Maybe it takes place in Chipotle? In that case, I'm there!!

From the co-worker who sent me the Romeo and Juliet quote a few weeks ago:

"A student on House on Mango Street:

'The story takes place in a burro.'

What a delicious place to live – so much better than a barrio."

This is English, not Chemistry.

A kid went to the bathroom and when he returned, immediately asked to go get a drink of water. I told him no, as he had work to do in class. This led to 10 minutes of incessant whining, including the following creative plea:

"Come ooooooon, M! I need two hydrogens and an oxygen…in liquid form…not solids or a gas. Noooooooow."

That gave me a good laugh, but I still denied him, mostly because his whining was pretty amusing.