More Old Stuff

Like I  mentioned in the last post, I'm cleaning my classroom.  Just today I found a bell schedule from 2007 in my podium.  I recycled it.  The good news for you is that I'm finding more old English Class Moments of Awesomeness.  Enjoy!

From spring 2011:
(These were near the top of a pile of papers.)

Honors English II while reading Julius Caesar:

Student 1: "It's in the 1700s!" (On why Brutus and Caesar wouldn't have played Wii together.)

Student: "When is Caesar's birthday?  Is it July?"
Havig: "I don't know."
Student: "Because he totally seems like a Leo."

Still Honors English II, but a more random conversation:
Student: "There's nothing wrong with animal nudity!"
On Mickey Mouse's and Donald Duck's partial nudity in a conversation of the incompatibilities and questions that SpongeBob SquarePants raises. 

More Honors English II:
(If you don't know this yet, my partner gave birth to our daughter, Abby, in September, 2010.  I may have talked about my kiddo off and on with my students.)

Student 1: "You haven't told a baby story in a long time."
Student 2 (singing to a Justin Bieber song): "Baby, baby, baby story."
Student 3: "No Justin Bieber. Ever."

That's it for this round.  I have some gems from the spring of 2009 to share with you including the infamous "water cage" moment.

Stuff from Years Gone By

I'm cleaning my classroom.  No, I'm REALLY cleaning my classroom.  I came across an attendance roster from March, 2011 with some MOA scribbled on them. 

Here they are:

As the ASB Advisor, I help the ASB students organize events including Mr. Prairie.  In previous years, Mr. Prairie has utilized young girls (ages 4-8ish) to act as escorts for the high school guy contestants.  Yes, the little girls are really adorable all dressed up in fancy dresses.  And yes, the notion creeps me out.  The kids were deciding if they wanted to use the young girls once again, and they kept referring to them as "little girl escorts."

Havig: "Can we not call them little girl escorts?  It just doesn't sound right."
Student 1:  "What's wrong with it?"
Havig:  "Doesn't it sound a little disturbing to you to call them little girl escorts?"
Student 2:  "No, our minds aren't polluted like that."


Reading a little Julius Caesar in Honors English II, and we were talking about Caesar's full name.

Student 1:  "So his real name was Gaius?"
Havig:  "Gaius. G-a-i-u-s, I think."
Student 2:  "Gaius?  How embarrassing.  It's like Gary.  No one wants that name."

December 2009-ish

Here are some moments that made it into the notebook from the school year before last.  Enjoy!

Honors English II:
Student: "I'm going to marry Lady Gaga, and we're going to have beautiful babies."
Havig: "Isn't she a bit old for you?"
Student: "Maybe she's a cougar, and when I'm 18, she'll pounce."

For whatever reason, we were discussing Disney movies and the number of characters who have been orphaned or who have lost one parent. 
Student: "They're not orphans if they have one parent. It would be like half.  They're an orph."

We were working on Paragraph Writing Strategies which involves a lot of note taking.  One of the example paragraphs was information about turtles.
Student: "If a turtle lost its shell, would it be naked or homeless?"
Havig: "Yes."

Creative Writing:
Student 1: "Have you seen the Blue Collar Comedy Tour?"
Havig: shakes head
Student 1: "Well, they have this thing where they use words to make sentences..."
Student 2 interrupting: "Dude, everyone uses words to make sentences."

It's Back!!!

Alright sports fans, people have been hounding me about putting some moments up, and I found my stash from last year.  As in the 2009-2010 school year. 

First I have some from the year before that, so these are my froshies who will actually be seniors next year.

These were from when we were finishing up the year with a little Romeo & Juliet.
Student 1: "What is an example of dramatic irony in Act IV?"
Student 2: "Friar John. When we learn that Friar John didn't get the message to Romeo because he was held up by the plague."
Student 3: "And ninjas."
Havig: "Not ninjas."
Student 1: "I figured that part out."

Student: "So she (Juliet) sucks his lips to get poison?"
Havig: "She kisses him. She doesn't suck his lips."
Student: "I would. He's hot!"

On to an Honors English II moment when they were working on their Julius Caesar and Macbeth video projects.  In short, they pick one of the plays, rewrite the script and film it. 
Student: "So people die in both plays."
Havig: "Right."
Student: "How accurately can we portray the deaths?"
Havig: "Well, don't actually kill anyone...please."
Student to other group member, "Uh, Student 2, we might need to re-shoot that scene."

It's Been Too Long...

Hey everyone -

I have been quite the slacker when it comes to posting.  Honestly, my system for documenting awesome moments kinda failed last year.  That and ASB was keeping me really busy.  However, you my loyal fan(s?) (love you, Mom!) have been asking when new moments will be posted.  I had no idea that you all really read this thing.  Awesome. 

I do have more moments from last year that I'm going to post, and the new school year is right around the corner.  Look for updates in the near future.  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

- Havig

ECMOA for the Week of May 25 - June 5, 2009

It has been well established that I am a slacker. However, I promise to post the rest of last year’s moments this weekend. I’ve also been piling up the moments for this year.

Enjoy!

We’ll start things off with a little Romeo & Juliet.

“See? They use a rope ladder. It is just like using her hair.”
- this particular student was convinced that R&J was just like Rapunzel.

While looking at a picture in the textbook from the 1963 version of the movie:
Student #1: “This is like a horror movie.”
Havig: “Oh, the picture?”
Student #1: “There’s a squid in that jar.”
Havig: “No, that’s just the liquid spilling over.”
Student #2 to Student #1: “What is wrong with you?!”

When Juliet “dies” and Romeo visits her tomb to die by her side:
Student #1: “How can that not tell she’s not dead? You just have to listen to their stomach.”
Student #2 “Their stomach?”
Student #1: “Y’know, their breastal region.” (said while circling his hand over his breastal region)


“You said that Lady Montegue died of grief, but really she was assassinated by ninjas.”

“That’s a lot of suck.”
- on the ending of R&J

“Jesus loves you, so it’s okay.”
- reasoning that it would be more logical for Friar Laurence to kill Juliet instead of sending her to a nunnery.

Student #1: “So it’s like the Prince and then Safeway and Fred Meyer.”
Havig: “Exactly.”
Answering another student’s question about who rules Verona and how the two families fit in.

Vocab moments:
“When I wrote it down, I wrote turdious.”
- instead of tedious

At some point I appointed a student (student #4) to be my minion and told her how she had to do my bidding. Later in the semester, minion was one of their vocab words. For their vocab assignments, they draw a picture to help them remember the word.
Student #1: “I drew a picture of Student #4 for minion.”
Student #2: “So did I!”
Student #3 “Me too!”

Other freshman moments:
Student #1: “Why would you eat raisins when you could eat chocolate?”
Student #2: “Why don’t you like raisins?”
Student #1: “They’re disgusting and taste like old lady.”

“Don’t, or I will punch you in the face. Twice.”
- one girl jokingly to another about the second girl putting her hair up.

ECMOA End of the Year Shenanigans for the month of May

I’m being lazy and am just going to break this down by month. By the way, as I write this, it is like 109 degrees outside, and 92 degrees inside my non-air conditioned house. I am that dedicated. I’m also watching Sex Decoys: Love Stings on Hulu. I feel like a unpaid advertisement for this TV show judging by the number of people I have told about this show. It is an absolute train wreck of a show. It follows Sandra Hope who runs a private investigator business which specializes in catching people suspected of cheating on their significant others.


Sandra uses her three daughters as decoys in the stings and wants her agency to be a family business. The older two daughters, Kashmir and Jasmine are part-time strippers. The youngest daughter is not a stripper probably only because she is not old enough to get into a bar. Oh, by the way her name is Xanadu. XANADU! ! ! Seriously! ! ! For those who don’t know, Xanadu is the name of the gigantic house/estate in Citizen Kane where the main character, Charles Kane, lives out his final days and where the infamous Rosebud sled is burned up at the end of the film. Citizen Kane is actually a really good movie, but like The Godfather, it’s best to be kind of doing something else while you’re watching it like ironing or writing thank you cards. For children of the 70s and 80s, Xanadu is the title of a supposedly horrific—as in horrible, not horror—film from 1980 staring Olivia Newton-John. I haven’t seen it, but everyone says it’s terrible. There are a bunch of muses, Gene Kelly is in it, and I can’t fathom why. Here’s the plot summary from IMDb:

The Greek muses incarnate themselves on Earth to inspire men to achieve. One of them, incarnated as a girl named Kira, encounters an artist named Sonny Malone. With the help of Danny McGuire, a man Kira had inspired forty years earlier, Sonny builds a huge disco roller rink.




Sometimes I miss the 80s. I want to see a movie with a culmination of the construction of a giant disco roller rink. Excuse me while I add it to my Netflix queue. I do believe I need to figure out a way I can justify showing this in class. It sounds kind of terribly awesome. Anyway, XANADU! I’m guessing that Sandra named her daughter after the Olivia Newton-John movie, not after the symbolic Xanadu from the greatest film of all time, as least according to every “Greatest Films of All Time” list that has ever been made.

Alas, I have digressed. Watch the show if you want to see a woman with scary amounts of collagen in her lips whore out her own daughters for the sake of catching really sleazy guys cheating on their girlfriends. I am warning you though, it just might suck you in. It’s a vortex of brain-numbing, why-am-I-watching-this-crap? awesomeness.

On to the moments!

Moment 1:
My Honors kids had a portion of their Julius Caesar exam which asked them to identify who said a quote and the context of the quote. Here are some excerpts from brilliant answers.

“Cassius, in his typical fashion, is having himself a pity party.”

“Murellus is disgusted by how the Romans quickly turned their backs on Pompey and followed Caesar’s new reign—SHINY!!!”

“This shows how ADD and childish the people of Rome are.”

“Caesar is talking to Antony about the kind of men he wants on his council. He doesn’t want men who think for themselves, rather ones that sit back and agree with his ideas. Like Hugh Hefner and the Playboy girls.”

Moment 2:
This time around in the Shakespeare unit, the students were asked to write a paragraph explaining whether or not they had any sympathy for the characters of Macbeth by the end of the play. More excerpts from their answers.

“Well, I guess I really feel sorry for Macbeth because his wife is a crazy woman that is udeserving and likes to kill for her own sick pleasure. I’m also happy that Lady Macbeth dies and has to suffer. So basically, I feel like you. (me, Havig) Ahahahahahaha.”

“I feel zero sympathy. I have a heart like Havig toward Macbeth.”

“He’s (Macbeth) a big boy, and he should act more like it.”

Moment 3:
Here are some freshman quotes:

“So it’s like bedazzling?”
student on the pinking of shoes in Romeo & Juliet. Pinking is punching little designs in one’s shoes.

Havig, handing out R&J packet: “I have a present for you.”
Student: “Can I re-gift it?”

Moment 4:
Here are some sophomore moments:

My third period class decided that Macbeth, the last piece of literature that we read this year was the perfect culmination of the class because it incorporated prostitutes and dead babies. Nearly every piece of literature that we read had a hooker in it, and for some reason we had some on-going dead baby joke conversations. I love my job.

I was chatting with my third period class about the movie I had seen the night before, Premonition staring Sandra Bullock. The movie itself isn’t really all that great, but the gag reel offers one of the best moments recorded on film. I really wanted to show the clip to the class, but I had already sent back the movie. Fortunately, a student’s mom loves the movie, and they had it at home. Thanks to Kelly, the class was able to watch the clip.

It is worth a rental just to watch the clip. I don’t want to spoil your experience in watching it, but imagine this: Sandra Bullock running toward a flaming car accident yelling for her husband + prop which is basically the head of her dead husband + CPR = hilarity. It made me love Sandra Bullock even more than I had before.

I’m still trying to get the awesome pictures that the students drew to upload. I’ll try to get those up soon.

Try to stay out of the heat!