ECMOA for the weeks of September 15-26

The Best of the Rest of last year:

There is one moment left over from last year, so here it is:

When the students get their yearbooks every spring, they obsess over them pretty much until the end of the school year. One student was adamant that people look at the picture of one student.

Student 1: “Okay, there’s a girl who growls in her pictures. She did it last year, and I was hoping she wouldn’t do it again, but apparently that’s her smile.”
Student 2 looking at picture: “She does look angry.”

Done with the old, on with the new…

There are a few moments from the new school year thus far. It takes awhile for the kids to get used to my warped sense of humor. The first few weeks are spent reassuring the students that I am not, indeed, out of my mind.

Moment 1:

My sophomore honors class read two novels over the summer, Ethan Frome and Gulliver’s Travels. The general idea of Ethan Frome is that the main character is in an unhappy marriage with a woman named Zeena when he falls in love with a young woman named Mattie who happens to live with them. Set in the early 1900s, Ethan and Mattie feel like they have few options. They decide to try kill themselves by sledding into a tree at the bottom of a large hill. The students researched marriage and held small group discussions about the novel. The following responses didn’t earn a lot of points for the groups who wrote them, but they still are kind of funny.

“If you didn’t love the person you’re married to, it sucks.”
- in response to: what have you learned from the reading, research and discussion?

“Today, people would’ve divorced Zeena by now.”

“They have better accuracy of committing suicide.”
- in response to: what alternatives do couples today have that Ethan did not have?

Moment 2:

Also from my sophomores:

“I’m going to get me some baby-skin boots.”
- student while reading “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift

If you haven't read "A Modest Proposal," I highly recommend it. Swift's mastery of satire is brilliant. Also, after you have read it, the Chili's babyback ribs jingle will never be the same. Trust me.

Moment 3:

The counselors moved 5 students out of my 3rd period into another teacher’s class because I had 10 more kids than she did. I talked to the 5 kids out in the hall toward the beginning of the period, and then they went down to the counselor’s office to get the paperwork. I was talking to the class about the day’s assignment when the 5 students came back, grabbed their stuff and left.

Student 1 inquiring about the student leaving: “Where are they going?”
Havig: “I’m having them killed.”
Student 2: “You said that with a straight face. That’s really scary.”

Of course these students don't even know the half of it. They haven't even seen my zombie preparedness fighting stance, and they haven't heard about the latch in my basement that keeps the zombies out of my house. They really have a lot to learn.

I hope you enjoyed this installment. I promise that I have more on the way.

Back to School ECMOA 2008

WELCOME BACK ! ! !

It is another new school year, and overall I’m not entirely hating the fact that summer is now over. The students started school the day after Labor Day, and ever since, I’ve been trying to learn 150 new names. It is always strange how at the beginning of the school year, the kids all kind of look the same. Most of the girls have long, straight hair in shades varying from blonde to dark blonde to light brown with blonde highlights to light brown without highlights to slightly darker brown…well, you get the picture. And for reasons still very unclear to me, the boys are still sporting the “I-need-a-haircut” haircut.

The students are starting to be less frightened by me, and they’re showing their personalities more and more each day. Sometimes it’s through well-rehearsed eye rolling. Sometimes it’s through laughing at my really bad jokes. Who knew literature could be so funny? Or maybe they're just laughing at my story about the time I got a black eye via the screen door handle while I was trying to grab my cat who was trying to go attack a raccoon 8 time his size.

We’re going to start on a note of not-so-awesomeness because, well, because what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t vent.

Back to School ECMON-S-A

So my computer doesn’t work. As in my school computer which I need to enter attendance, enter grades, email, create assignments, print, etc. does not work. I knew this before school started because like a sucker, I came in two weeks before school started to prepare for the start of school. Computer no worky. (That is a Havig familial colloquialism meaning something does not function properly, by the way.) No worries though. I put in a work order, and it should be fixed in no time. My tech-savvy co-worker even took a look at it and did all that stuff that I don’t know how to do, and she said the outlook was bleak. five weeks later, I’m still without a computer. I called IT during the first week of school and left a message. Shortly afterword, the IT people sent out an email to the entire district telling people not to call after they have submitted a work order. I’m sure lots people had requests and were checking on the status of their work orders, but I couldn’t help but feel like the email was directed at me. I’m also pretty sure that my work order was either “lost” or moved to the bottom of the pile.

Enough complaining on my part . On to the awesomeness ! ! !

These are from the end of the year last year, so we’ll consider the Back to School Best of May and June English Class Moments of Awesomeness.

Moment 1:
My honors kids were reading Joy Luck Club, and the class was discussing why the main character’s mother pushes her to succeed so much.
Student 1: “She does it out of love.”
Student 2: “What’s love got to do with it?”
It wasn’t until a few beats later that she realized what she said. Unfortunately, she declined requests to sing the rest of the Tina Turner song.

Moment 2:
Also during the Joy Luck Club unit, one student misread the title “Red Candle” on the board as “Red Candie.”
Student 1: “Red Candle…candy…candle…candy. I guess candy is spelled with a ‘y’ and not ‘ie.’
Student 2: “Candie with an id sounds like a hooker name.”
Student 1: “All artificial sweeteners are hooker names.”
Havig: “I don’t think I’ve ever met a hooker named Splenda. Have you, Student 1? Equal? Sweet & Low?”

Moment 3:
More Joy Luck Club goodness. For each of the families, there is a quiz that the students take. A student had come in to make up her quiz and was about to hand it to me while I was sitting at my desk. She saw a quiz key on my desk and started checking her answers.
Student 1 with growing look of horror: “Oh. Oh. OH.”
Havig: “That’s the wrong key.”
Student 1: “Thank goodness. I only got one right on the first side.”
Student 2: “What happened?”
Student 1: “I was looking at the Ha-su family on instead.” (The name is actually Hsu.)
Havig: “I like how you say the Chinese names like they’re Spanish.” (Earlier, she had pronounced Jong as “Hong.”)
Student 1: “Well, I don’t know Japa…” (She stopped herself realizing her mistake.)

Moment 4:
I don’t remember how this conversation started, so we’ll just go with it. I should point out that Student 2 is a boy, and the others are all girls. Once again this is my Honors English II class during 4th period.

Student 1: “Nancy Drew wasn’t around in 1903.”
Student 2: “Yes, it was. Nancy Drew is timeless.”
Student 3: “Have you ever even read Nancy Drew?”
Student 2: “No.”
Student 4: “What boy would read Nancy Drew?”
Havig: “It’s not like it’s a girly book. It’s not all flowers and ‘I’m so in love.’ It’s ‘I found a skull, and now I’m going to find out where it came from. That’s Nancy Drew. Well, that’s my Nancy Drew.”
Student 4: “Honestly, what high school girl goes around finding skulls?”
Student 5 tentatively raises her hand.

Moment 5:
Student 1: “I spell phonetically.”
Student 2: “As opposed to correctly?”

I have some more from last year, and this year’s batch of kiddos are already contributing there own moments of awesomeness. Stay tuned and have an awesome week.

June 17, 2008

It's the last day of school! ! !

ECMOA for the week(s) er…month of April 21- May 30.

It has been very busy the past few weeks with the end of the school year nearing and my lack of motivation to grade increasing with each passing day. There are only 12 days of school left, including two half days for student finals. The kids are getting very antsy as the promises of summer vacation near. I’ll break up that last month or so into a few installments. Here is the first:

Moment 1:
Some random quotes:

Student: “Is allyship a word?”
Havig: “No, but alliance is.”
Student: “Well, a lot of times when I make up words they end up being real words.”

Student teacher Lee conducted her master’s thesis research with my freshmen class. She explained what she had to do for her project to the students, including the 40 page paper. To this a student replied:
“Forty pages? Snap!”

“I love this song!”
- a senior’s response to the bagpipe introduction in Dead Poet’s Society.

Moment 2:
This is actually from quite awhile ago. The students wrote Poe Parody poems by selecting their own topic and imitating the format of Poe’s “The Raven.” The students usually come up with some great, original ideas, and I have them read their poems to the class. The following is a segment of a student reading her poem.

Student: “This doesn’t even rhyme.” (said while she is reading her own poem) “Well, it was ‘pee on the floor,’ but I changed it to ‘chowder,’ so it would rhyme better.”
Havig: “I’m going to read yours to the kids next year as an example.”
Student: “Really?”
Havig: “No.”

Moment 3:
Okay, another English teacher and I have this idea to create stamps of all of the phrases that we write over and over on student papers. We figured we could make more money doing that than teaching, and other English teachers would benefit as well. Some of the phrases that we believe would make excellent stamps include: “How does this connect to your thesis statement?” “Support your opinion.” “Huh?”

I was having a conversation with a student about these stamps, and we were talking about the stamps that teachers wish they could use.

He said: “I like the ‘You suck.’ stamp. It’s more demeaning.”

Moment 4:

While watching the film version of Julius Caesar:
“She’s (Calphurnia) way taller than him! (Caesar).” [Caesar stands up from a seated position.] “Oh.”

Moment 5:
It’s Romeo & Juliet time!

Due to lack of time, I’ve had to run through Romeo & Juliet with the kids this year. Usually there are quite a few R&J moments of awesomeness, but that’s just not the case this year. However, there is quite the gem from one of my freshmen. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is upset about a girl named Rosaline, so he spends his days holed up in his room with the curtains drawn making an “artificial night” while he spends his nights wandering around Verona crying like a small child. I asked the class why Romeo would be upset about Rosaline, to which a student replied, “She talked bad about him on MySpace.”

Moment 6:
Tomorrow is the last day for my 6th period seniors.

That’s it for now. I have more moments, but I also have a ton of grading to do.

Invasion of the Post-it Notes ! ! !

These moments are from the past few months, and possibly years. I found a stash of post-it notes in, on, and around my desk. I’m including them in this special edition since I’ve been slacking a bit on regular posting the past few weeks.

Here you go. Enjoy!

Those familiar with the blog (or my class) know that I show a really cheesy version of The Pit and the Pendulum starring Vincent Price to my sophomores. Here are some student comments on the film:

“Let’s split up and look for clues, gang!”
-as the characters hear an odd noise coming from the dungeon area

“That’s why you bring a gun!”
- when Elizabeth (who is supposed to be dead) exits the casket

“And shut the door! Are you on crack?! Just for that, I hope he dies.”
- after Nicolas makes a really slow and poorly executed escape from Elizabeth’s corpse

Havig: “If I ever go crazy and start repeating a word over and over again, I want it to be a better word than ‘true.’” (which is what Nicolas repeats over and over as he runs away from Elizabeth’s corpse)
Student 1: “Yeah, like a long complicated word.”
Student 2: “Like parabola.”

“I’d try to fall asleep or something.”
- student on what he would do if he was tortured Pit & the Pendulum style

“A lot of people don’t know this, but he also invented the Care Bears.”
- student on the biography of Edgar Allan Poe

Here are some quotes from my freshmen last year:

“All kinds of ice cream are equal in my eyes.”
- student’s response on his favorite flavor of ice cream

“Otherwise it wouldn’t be called ‘notes.’ It would be called ‘read.’”
- student answering another student’s question of ‘do we have to write this down?”

The seniors even had a quote of their own:

Student 1: “I hate chap stick!”
Student 2: “I know. You always have dry and cracked lips.”

I hope you enjoyed this edition. Look back for a new posting sometime this weekend.

ECMOA for the week of April 14-18, 2008

We had Math and Science WASL testing all week, so that in itself is awesome because I get to proctor in my own room. This means that I get to work on stuff while the students are testing. The down side is that I’m the one who has to read pages and pages of instructions each morning. Speaking of reading instructions, the instructions are really corny, and you have to read example questions and answers without any background information about the question. One of the reading example extended response—or maybe it was short answer—was about goats, and it made me laugh because it was really, really random. Apparently, according to my first period class, I walk strangely when I’m reading aloud and walking backwards. They said I was skipping backwards. After I went out in the hall to walk backwards to see what they were talking about, I admit that I bounce a tad when I walk backwards. It is not skipping, however.

Anyway, on with the moments…

Moment 1:
The students have been assigned a research project on an author. The students drew author names out of a hat.

Student: “Can we switch authors?”
Lee: “Why would you do that? That’s lame.”
Student: “What if you have a lame author?”
Lee: “Maybe you’re lame, so you need a lame author.”

Moment 2:
English I read A Separate Peace and here are a few student responses to a question about whether or not girls would appreciate the novel as much as boys since there aren’t any female characters.

“I think boys appreciate (the novel) more because girls don’t jump off trees and try to kill each other.”

“I think girls can appreciate this story because they can see how stupid boys can be.”

Moment 3:
I don’t remember the situation, but one student was complaining that something was difficult, I believe.

Student 1: “Man up, Student 2. Man up.”
Student 2: “Maybe I want to be a sissy.”

Moment 4:
With the WASL testing, there was some flexibility regarding when we could let the students go to lunch.

Havig: “The sooner you are quiet, the sooner you can go to lunch.”
Student: “Everyone be quiet!”
Havig: “Wow, no one get between Student and her food.”

Moment 5:
The student from moment 4 was sitting in the front corner of the room during testing, so she was near me when I was reading the instructions. She was asking the student sitting behind her (Student 2) to get something off of the back of her shirt.

Student 2: “Hold still.”
Student 1: “Get it off!”
Havig to Student 1: “What are you doing?”
Student 1: “Student 2 is getting the hair off my back.”

Now she kind of announced this to the whole class, and I couldn’t help but laugh. To top it off, later that day, she drew a picture of the back hair removal process on her vocabulary quiz.

Moment 6:
The tragic news of the week is that I only have Student Teacher Lee for two more weeks. She mentioned something to the kids in 4th period about leaving soon. A student asked if Lee would give out her phone number. Before the student could even complete the request, Lee replied with “absolutely not.” Lee did say that she would give them her email that she never uses. Lee explained that her university supervisor recommended that the student teachers use a professional email address for their resume and correspondence with school districts while they engage in the great job hunt. They shouldn’t use a cutesy email. Lee said that she would give them the professional email address, though her regular email isn’t cutesy.

Havig: “Yes, it is cutesy.”
Lee:: “It’s lyrics from a song.”
Havig: “Still cutesy.”
Student: “What is it?”
Havig (trying to think of something cutesy): “Dancing bear…”
Lee (laughing): “That’s a strip club in Portland.”


Here are some random moments from when I was slacking on the whole posting aspect of this thing.

Moment 7:
“It’s all fun and games until someone gets pregnant.”
Student commenting on the part of the Cry, the Beloved Country movie when the main character meets his son’s pregnant girlfriend.

Moment 8:
“Pirates…the Irish…They’re the same.”
Student talking about the movie the history class next door was watching when I told him if was about Irish immigrants. He thought it sounded like a pirate movie.

Moment 9:
I don’t really remember the context, but it was not food.
Lee: “What were you going to bring?”
Student 1: “Oh, I was going to bring in…”
Student 2: “Pop Corn!”
Havig: “How’s left field, Student 2?”
Student 2 (confused): “Huh? I don’t play sports.”
Student 3: “That just made my day.”

I hope you enjoyed this week's installment.

Have a fantastic week!

ECMOA for the week of April 7-11, 2008

It’s always difficult to come back to work after Spring Break. What the students don’t realize is that Spring Break is really for the teachers. They give us a week off to help us maintain our sanity. Spring Break also helps keep the student mortality rate down. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their break. Of course if you have a “real” job, you don’t get a Spring Break. And I laugh at you.

Speaking of break, over the break I went to the coast, and I got the coolest bumper sticker. I has a Jolly Roger (skull and crossbones) background with the following quote: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” It now adorns my white board in the area dedicated to student drawings.

This week’s ECMOA is mostly quotes, and I hope you enjoy them. The initial ROY G BIV color order is in honor of my super cool magnet letters that are currently spelling out the month on my whiteboard. It just so happened that the letters that spelled out APRIL were in rainbow order. After that, the moments are just in colors that I like.

Moment 1:
“You’ve ruined reading for me. You made me an active reader.”
Student announcing that she no longer could read for fun without writing in her book and annotating passages.

Moment 2:
“M&Ms are the hotdogs of chocolate.”
Student Teacher Lee declining an offer of M&Ms.

Moment 3:
This one is actually from awhile ago, but I found the post it note with the quote on my desk blotter when I changed to the new month. It hails back from the King Arthur Unit.

“Yes, getting killed by Lancelot is like fighting Chuck Norris.”
Student responding to how all of the other knights want to die by Lancelot’s sword.

Moment 4:
The staff bathroom in my building is also the staffroom where the printer is located, and I took the stapler to the bathroom to staple some papers together. However, when I left the room, I just told Lee that I was going to the bathroom. Plus I returned without any papers because they had failed to print.

Lee: “Why did you take the stapler to the bathroom?”
Havig: “Why don’t you take the stapler to the bathroom?”
Lee: “I take the tape.”

Moment 5:
“I hate the first few days of school. All you do is walk down to the library and write essays about yourself.”

Moment 6:
While the majority of 5th period went down to the library to pick up copies of Julius Caesar, two students remained in the classroom with me. One student put on some lotion which started a conversation about the smell of the lotion.
Student 1 stated that she thought the lotion smelled like Christmas.
Student 2 said that the lotion smelled like her grandma.
Student 1’s reply: "It doesn’t smell like my grandma. She smells like wine…and cats.”

Moment 7:
“Well, I’m not going to college.”
English I student upon looking at his returned essay 2nd draft which I had corrected. He later decided that he still could go to college after he read the comments on the paper.

Moment 8:
“That’s really nice. He was very thoughtful.”
Student observation on Caesar having the throats slit of the pirates who kidnapped him in order to hasten their deaths. He did this because he admired them, and didn’t want them to suffer too much as they were crucified at his request.

Moment 9:
Lee: “Here is how Julius Caesar is broken down: Acts...”
Student (interrupting): “I thought he was knifed.”

Moment 10:
“I could hold my pee for extra credit.”
Student on why he doesn’t use his bathroom passes. Students get 6 passes and each unused pass is worth a few points at the end of the semester.

Moment 11:
Student 1: “I could do that.”
Student 2: “That’s my special homework, so back off!”
Student 2 was assigned the special homework of figuring out the exact middle of March (to the second) for the whole Ides of March thing.

That’s it for this week. Next week we have math and science WASL testing. Good times!

Have a great week!