ECMOA for February 16 - March 13, 2009

There are only two weeks until Spring Break! Not that I'm counting...

Moment 1:

My freshmen completed an assignment called the Who Am I? box where they share important objects or photos that tell the class more about them. My fifth period class was talking about what kinds of objects they were going to include in their boxes, and a few girls were talking about the Bratz Dolls of their childhoods.

Student 1: They (Bratz Dolls) do not dress appropriately.”
Havig: “Not a lot of meeting the dress code.”
Student 2: “That’s because they don’t dress. The don’t wear clothes.”
Student 3: “I don’t like Bratz Dolls. They’re ugly.”
Student 2: “And they used to try to be Barbies. Oh wait, that was just me playing.”

Moment 2:
“Can I borrow a Band-Aid, but forever. Like not give it back?”
Personally, that’s the only kind of borrowing of Band-Aids of which I approve.

Moment 3:
One of the students in 4th period made a future life plan for another student documenting her future marriage and children. There was some conversation while one student was trying to explain it to another student. At some point in time, the student whose life had been planned mentioned her cousin getting married. Another student responed:
“What? You’re marrying your cousin? I know you’re from Amboy, but seriously.”

Moment 4:
Sophomores are reading Don Quixote at the moment, and one student was talking about a quote in the novel.
Student 1: “I don’t speak French. I speak normal.”
Student 2: “It’s in Spanish.”
Student 1: "Oh."

Moment 5:
I’m trying to convince my 5th period freshmen that The Office is really funny and worth watching. They do not agree with me.
“Oh, is that an inside joke from The Office? That’s why it’s not funny to us.”

Moment 6:
I showed my freshmen the opening clip from Dead Poet’s Society as part of background information for A Separate Peace. There are bagpipes playing at the opening ceremony.
“Oh, the music of my people!”

Moment 7:
Now, my 5th period class is quite the bunch of distractible kids. One student asked which of two students who sit up by the front are more distracting.
Havig: “I think Student 1 is more distracting than Student 2.”
Student 2: “Thanks, I think. Wait, did you say attractive?”
Havig: “No. (laughing) I said distracting.”
Student 2: “Oh, I thought you said attractive.”
Havig: “That would be a little weird, wouldn’t it?”
Student 2: “Yeah, I guess it would.”

Moment 8:
Student 1 is in a marketing class, and had made an advertisement for Cheerios.
Student 1: “If you say this walking down the hall, would you buy Cheerios?”
Havig: “Well, I like Cheerios anyway, so I wouldn’t need much convincing.”
Student 2: “Ooh, me too. I love Cheerios. I took the 6-week challenge, and my cholesterol went down.”

Have a fantastic week!

ECMOA for the Weeks of February 2-13th, 2009

Late starts can be a beautiful thing. Not having to go into work for two hours simply because the weather is bad is seriously one of the major perks to being a teacher. We had a late start on Tuesday, and 10th, and it was marvelous. The only that could have made this particular late start even better is that they didn’t announce it until I was already eating breakfast. On a perfect late start, I get to sleep in a bit. Ce la vie. I did get into school year well before the students showed up, and one of the things I did was bleach wipe all of the student desks. There is some nasty illness going around, and I don’t want to get sick.

Moment 1:
My sophomores just finished reading some Arthurian Legends, and in one of the class discussions, it was noted that Guinevere is basically the Yoko Ono of Camelot.

Moment 2:
Student: “You know how when cows eat other cows, they get mad cow’s disease?”
Havig: “Yeah?”
Student: “Does that happen when people eat people?”
Havig: “Well, Mad Cow is when they eat the brains, so it’s a little different. (Pause.) Are you interested in a little cannibalism?”
Student: “Um, no. My sister was talking about it.”
Havig: “Is she?”
Student (hesitantly): “I don’t think so.”

Moment 3:
My students tend to draw pictures or write random things on the back of their vocab quizzes. They are a pretty creative bunch overall, but there was one this week that led to a moment of awesomeness.

Next to a large smiley face: “My grandmother hated smiley faces because she thought it was a gang symbol for drugs.”

Havig: “That reminds me of my mom. I like to wear baseball hats on occasion. Now, I grew up in White Salmon which has about 2000 people, so of course we had a huge gang problem.”
Student (with a lot of seriousness): “Really?”
Long pause with several students snickering.
Havig to student: “That was sarcasm.”
Student: “Oh.”

Have a good Week!

ECMOA for the Weeks of January 16th-30th, 2009

This entry finds us ending first semester and beginning a brand new semester. This also means that the school year is officially over half way through. Not that I’m counting.

Moment 1:

In the process of teaching detail sentences to my freshmen, I may have made the mistake of telling my 5th period class about my questionable wardrobe choices that I made in the fifth grade. The short of it is that I do not have any concept of “matching” my clothes. As a friend (hey Catherine!) pointed out on one of my Facebook pictures, my “shades of crimson do not match. Not just me and Erinn (the other person in the picture), but me and me.” The details of my 5th grade wardrobe shenanigans go something like this: Sweatpants in a variety of colors EVERY DAY along with this mostly royal blue flannel shirt which I wore nearly every day. Here is where the whole “matching” concept that is not in my brain really got me into trouble. The flannel shirt in all of its plaid glory had a mixture of colors. My “matching” logic: In the flannel shirt, there is a little stripe red, so I can wear red sweatpants. There is also a little stripe of teal in the flannel shirt, so I can wear a teal shirt along with the red sweats, and the flannel shirt ties it all together. I have pictures. No, I will not post them. My mother used to lament that people would think that I was an orphan who was unloved if she let me go to school like that. It still doesn’t “look wrong” to me, but enough people have made valiant attempts to correct my wrongs that I take their word for it.

In continuing to explain how the detail sentences of a paragraph should support the topic sentence, I said, “So if I was writing a paragraph about my horrendous wardrobe in the 5th grade, I wouldn’t mention what a snappy dresser I am now.”
Student: “Did you say, ‘snappy?’”
Havig: “Yes, I did.”

I told my students some of the rules, including one of my personal favorites, your belt should always match your shoes.

Moment 2:

Havig: “Are you meowing again?”
Student: “I don’t meow. Cats meow. (Her actual name) talks, but you may call me Violet.”
Early in the year, I kept calling her by the wrong name, so she tried to get me to call her Violet. Just for a fame of reference, this is the same student who used to bite her brother and his friends in the car.

Moment 3:

Back to my 5th period class.
Student 1 and Student 2 have the same name, although they each spell it differently.

Student 1: “That’s cliché.”
Student 2: “What’s that mean?”
Student 1: “I don’t even know. (to Havig) What’s cliché mean?”
Havig: “When something is said so often, it’s not original anymore, so it’s considered cliché. Maybe you two shouldn’t sit next to each other.”
Student 3: “So, if someone copies your clothes, that’s cliché?”
Havig: “Ah, not really like that.”
Student 4: “Like with clothes not matching, like clashe, cliché?”
Havig: “That’s clashing. Clashing and cliché have nothing to do with each other. I’m trying to figure out a way to explain it. Okay, using the phrase “el oh el” in your texts is cliché because you’re not really laughing out loud, and everyone uses it, so it’s not original anymore.”
Student 5: “Ha, el, oh, el.”
Student 2: “Can we get back to English now?”
Student 6: “Let’s not.”
Student 3: “But (Student 1 & 2’s name) wants to learn.”
Student 1 pointing to Student 2: “Not me, that one!”

Moment 4:

My students are in the middle of a social justice unit, and one of the first stories we read was an excerpt from the biography of Susan B. Anthony. I had them define justice the best they could, and then we talked about the different kinds of justice.

Havig: “Have you ever heard the expression ‘eye for an eye?’”
Student: “Yeah, eye for an eye, pinch for a pinch, cookie for a cookie.”
Havig: “What on earth are you talking about?”

Later in the period as we were starting Susan B. Anthony’s biography…

Student 1: “She’s scary looking!”
Havig: “Yeah, she’s a bit frightening.”
Student 2: “What’s wrong with her eyes?”
Student 3: “How come she’s frowning?”
Student 4: “She looks scary.”
Havig: “Well, we’re not admiring her for her aesthetic appeal.”
Student 1: “Yeah, she did a lot of good things (cracking herself up) you have to look on the positive side.”

The pictures of good ol’ Susan B. are not flattering.

Moment 5:
(Two days after Moment 1.)

Student: “Hey! Your belt does match your shoes.”

I do follow the rules people!

Moment 6:

“How can you say that without puking a little bit in your mouth?”
Student in response to another student’s story about some killer who carried around the eyeballs of his victims in his coat pocket.

Moment 7:

“That’s awkward. It’s not incest, but it’s awkward.”
Student on the idea of a guy’s divorced mom hooking up with the dad of his wife. (So if John and Mary were married, and John’s mom later married Mary’s dad. Creepy.)

Moment 8:

“What about the love of food?”
Student in response to one of the Rules of Love (we’re talkin’ King Arthur, courtly love and chivalry) which implies that love impacts people in love not being able to eat or sleep.

Moment 9:

“Ms. Havig, you’re making me a failure at life.”
Student’s comment after I wouldn’t let her leave class early to go get her history textbook for her next class.

“Wow, that’s harsh. It’s not crying like you want, but that’s still pretty good.”
Other student commenting on the statement above. I may have told them about my teaching goal of having a student cry from feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work they get in my class. It has yet to happen.

I have the feeling that my reformed 5th period English I class is going to provide a lot of moments this semester because they have been cracking me up all week.

ECMOA for January 5-16, 2009

Holy crap it’s a brand new year!

Before we get on with the moments, there is a You Tube that you should check out. Just to warn you it’s really disturbing, but in a funny kind of way. One of those, you’re a teacher—you shouldn’t find that funny kind of funny. However, I am the kind of teacher that loves Family Guy and Robot Chicken and all of their amazing inappropriateness. Anyway, go to YouTube and search for “The Count Censored” and watch the video. It really makes you wonder what the original Sesame Street people were thinking when they wrote that song.

Moment 1:
We were discussing Count von Count from Sesame Street and how awesome he is when my random student in 3rd period randomly said, “3 is the best. 1, 2, 3.”

Moment 2:
“You just compared God to the WASL.”

Student in my third period class in response to my commentary on Leo Tolstoy’s “Work, Death, and Sickness.” In this short story, a god figure wants man to work together, but never lets man know. He just makes them suffer in different ways in hopes that they would learn to work together. The mysterious end goal combined with seemingly unnecessary suffering reminded me of the WASL—the WASL is Washington’s mandated state test to measure Annual Yearly Progress in order to comply with the No Child Left Behind legislation.

Moment 3:
I started teaching another teacher’s Honors English II class since she went on maternity leave at the beginning of January. For whatever reason, those kids (6th period) were freaking out a bit about having me as their teacher instead. Something about they thought I was going to overload them with work. My fourth period class decided that I should perpetuate my reputation by being slightly crazy and creep them totally out.

Here are some of their suggestions:
- relate everything to death
- don’t ever smile
- don’t even use sarcasm
- any time some one laughs tell them, “it’s English class time; it’s not joke time.”
- make them do what ever the English class equivalent is of running laps

From this last suggestion, a student said that writing sentences would be the English class equivalent of running laps resulting in the following conversation.

Student 1: “I will not tell lies.”
Havig: “Yeah, make them write in their own blood.”
Student 2: “WHAT?!?!?!?”

Student 2 had not been paying attention to the rest of the conversation and thought we were still talking about what I should do to further freak out 6th period.

Moment 4:
This is connected with the above suggestions from 4th period. A student suggested making them read aloud, and another upped the ante by saying I should have them read aloud in unison. I pointed out that having students read aloud in unison was really creepy and was very cult-like.

This related to an earlier discussion the class had about infomercials, and one of the current favorite infomercials is the one for Snuggies. The students decided that they wanted to all get Snuggies in matching colors and wear them to class. It was further decided that they could get the hearing amplifier that looks like a blue tooth head set to look even more like a cult.

Moment 5:
Student: “I learned the difference between oceans and seas today.”
Havig: “That’s good.”
Student after some thoughtful reflection: “If it actually comes from the ocean, why isn’t it called ocean food?”
Havig: “I have no idea.”

Moment 6:
In Honors English II class, we are reading Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoesvsky. Now this is a tough read, especially since the first part is basically the narrator rambling on about all that is wrong with himself and with society. In my new acquired 6th period class, they were asking if the second part of the novel got any better.

Havig: “Well, there’s a hooker.”
Student: “Hasn’t there been a hooker in everything we’ve read.”
Havig, thinking back on the last three novels we’ve read, “Why yes, actually.”

For the record, the presence of hookers was completely coincidental.

Moment 7:
My freshmen just finished reading The Odyssey this week. Last week I was explaining the complex character that is Odysseus. I was telling them to look for the decisions that make Ody a good leader and the ones that make him a poor leader. I also described how he is a physical phenom when it came to battling.

Student 1: “That sound like me.”
Havig: “What, good decisions, bad decisions?”
Student 1: “Well, yeah, and strong.”
Havig while doing a little mock Hulk Hogan pose: “You going to pose a little for us?”
Student 1: “Nah.”
Havig: “Did you get your tickets?”
Student 1, laughing about the reference: “Yeah.”
Student 2: “Tickets?”
Havig: “Your tickets to the gun show.”
Student 2: “That’s like some 80s pick up line.”
Havig: “That’s not from the 80s.”
Student 2: “Well, it sounds like something my dad would say.”

Moment 8:
A student put a fake parking violation on my windshield afterschool one day. For the record, my truck was perfectly parked; however, the ticket was for having an “abnormally large” vehicle. Now that I cannot argue with.

Moment 9:
“How long do you think it would take to clean up all of that blood?”
Student in response to Book 22 of The Odyssey with is appropriately titled “Death in the Great Hall” where Ody slaughters 100 men.

Moment 10:
After we finished reading The Odyssey, we started watching the 1997 movie version which begins with Ody running to where his wife, Penelope, is in active labor.
Student: “I thought she (Penelope) was supposed to be pretty.”
Havig: “Dude, she’s in labor. Give her a break.”

There is only one week left in first semester. That in itself is an awesome moment.

Have a good week!

ECMOA for the Month of December, 2008

December was a very short month school wise. Winter break was only part of the lack of school days. Due to Arctic Blast 2008, we had three snow days to close out the week before winter break. No complaints here.

Moment 1:
Okay, this is totally about me, but since the occasion was my 30th birthday, I think it’s okay to put my moment first. I turned 30 on a Saturday, and on the Friday before, a few of my colleagues (Riedel, Truelove, and Muller) decorated my classroom in celebration. The Happy Birthday signs were fantastic. However, I was a little frightened by the shear amount of pink that inhabited my workspace. It seemed a few giant pink elephants ate a few too many pink Hostess Snowballs while drinking pink lemonade and then threw up all over my classroom. There were numerous princess tiaras stapled to my walls. The best (worst?) part was the infinite amount of pink metallic tinsel covering EVERYTHING. My desk, my podium, my overhead, all of the shelves, the counter, all of my desk drawers, my cupboard were all covered in the stuff. That and confetti in the form of little Happy Birthdays, stars and dime sized Barbie stickers. Again, these were all over my desk and podium. In my desk drawers, I also found a Barbie doll and a My Little Pony named Pinkie Pie. Absolutely horrifying. When I asked the culprits about the theme of the décor, they admitted that when they were planning my room décor, they asked themselves, what says Havig? They decided that pink and princesses was the answer.

Moment 2:
Students in my 4th period class were swapping stories of their childhood. Once again, I’m not sure how the topic came up, but I swear it had to do with what they were reading for class. Anyway, one student was recounting how when she was little, her older brother (who is two years older than her) and his friend would fight over who had to sit next to her in the car. Apparently it was a huge deal and not just the typical calling shotgun. She couldn’t figure out why neither of them ever wanted to sit by her. She was feeling quite slighted by the whole ordeal.

Then, as her story continued, she got a little quieter and admitted, “and sometimes, in the car, I would bite them…hard.”

Moment 3:
A student in my 3rd period class said “reading” as a weird past tense way, pronouncing it like “redding” instead of “reeding.” Then we got into a discussion about it, and I shared a little gem about a professor I had who used the read (present tense) and read (past tense) thing to point out how important context is when reading. He wrote READ on the board and asked a student to pronounce the word. Which ever way the student said it, he said it was wrong. The student in my class was adamant that the way he said it could be correct. At this time, another student pointed out that, “it’s not ‘slepting’” as an example of why he was wrong.

Moment 4:
One of the students in my 3rd period class set up a blog to keep track of the win/fail points that students have earned in class. One student earned numerous fail points for bringing in a bag of cookies and sharing them with the class. The fail points were because he later admitted that he had found the cookies in his garage, and he wasn’t sure how old they were. Fail points indeed.

School starts up again tomorrow. Wish us all luck.

ECMOA: Special Snow Day Edition 12-17-08

Happy Snow Day! I live in Vancouver, Washington which is sometimes considered as part of the Portland-Metro area. Something that I’ve learned in my seven years of residence in this fair city is that a tiny bit of snow makes the entire region shut down. I grew up where we got snow every winter, usually around a couple of feet or so. Sometimes we got more (6 feet was the record in my lifetime); sometimes we didn’t get snow at all. However, snow didn’t paralyze the entire community. People know how to drive in the snow in my hometown. Very few people know how to drive in the snow around here. Long story short, we’ve had a dusting of snow. Seriously, I can still count individual snow flakes lying on the ground. And school has been canceled. Full disclosure, I live in Vancouver, and Vancouver School District is open today. I’m sure that the upper elevations in Battle Ground where I work has some decent snow. I’m currently watching news reports of “Arctic Blast 08.” My cat, Baxter, LOVES these kinds of days because he likes to attack the ticker running along the bottom of the screen. He’s a giant cat, so he has not problem standing up on his hind legs to bat at the screen with both paws. He has worn himself out and is sleeping next to me on the couch.

I’m actually kind of glad. I brought home some work to do just incase we didn’t have school today. Plus while I generally like my students, two consecutive days of late start makes them exhausting and nearly unbearable. I have to remind myself that they don’t get snow very often, so it’s a big deal to them. Whenever we get snow around here, and the kids are confident that the two inches accumulated on the ground means that they will be sent home early (for the record, that has never happened in my 7 years in the district), it makes me have one of those “back in my day…” moments.

So, here is my own winter weather tale:

My sophomore year of high school, I had to walk to school because my dad was at an outage with the truck. My dad was branch manager for the White Salmon branch of Klickitat County PUD, so when the weather was nasty, he was usually at work coordinating the restoration of power to the outlying areas. We hadn’t heard of any closures, so I got ready to walk to school in about a foot of snow. The walk wasn’t that far, a little less than a mile and a half, and one that I had done since I was in the 5th grade. The walk to school took me up the road to the top of Strawberry Mountain (a very deceiving name—a hill at best), then down through an orchard to the school. I got all bundled up and headed out to school only to find the doors to the high school locked. I walked around to the front entrance which was open, and saw a sign that said “School is 2 Hours Late.” I decided to go ahead and walk the mile and half back home instead of sitting around at the cold school for two hours. After enjoying some hot chocolate, I trudged back to school. Another sign greeted me: “School is Canceled.” Crap. By the time I made my fourth trek through the orchard it had snowed another few inches. My mom just laughed at me when I got back home. She told me that she had heard on the radio that school had been canceled about 20 minutes after I left home the second time. I thought the whole thing was kind of funny as well, though I was disappointed that I didn’t get to sleep in on the snow day. I believe these kinds of experiences are filed under “Character Building.”

ECMOA for the Month of November, 2008

November is the 4th best month to be a teacher. June, July, and August getting the top three spots, of course. Why is November so great? Lots of days off. Between Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving Break, I get a random four days off from work. Plus it usually starts on the tail end of a week of half days for parent/teacher conferences. While we do get two weeks off for winter break, the chaos of dealing with amped up teenagers for the first two weeks of December counterbalances the joy of a two-week vacation.

It’s a short installment this month, but it doesn’t make it any less awesome. Enjoy!

Moment 1:
Two students were talking by my desk.
Student 1 (to several students): “Do you like spaghetti? Do you like spaghetti? Am I like the only person who doesn’t like spaghetti?”
Student 2: “Why not?”
Student 1: “Well, I choked on a noodle, just a plain noodle, when I was little.”
Havig: “Were you attacked by a pack of spaghetti as a small child?”
Student 1: “Yeah, spaghetti killed my father and raped my mother.”

The timing was hilarious.

Moment 2:
From a student’s paper regarding parental advice:
“My mother drives me insane. She likes really disgusting things, which is probably why she is a dental hygienist.”

The opening line from another student’s parental advice paper:
“You know nothing of granny squares!”

She later explained what granny squares were, but I still think it is one of the best first lines I have read. I am going to start using it as my “you’re an idiot!” phrase.

Moment 3:
“I’m sure your bladder will make friends some day.”
- student in response to my explanation that I have a very shy bladder, and thus do not like using the restroom when other people are in the restroom. It wasn’t just the comment, it was the really creepy way the student made the comment that made this awesome.

Moment 4:
A conversation with my freshmen about parents:
Student 1: “How old is your dad?”
Student 2: “He’s like 30.”
Student 1: “So he had you when he was 16?”
Student 2 (slightly perplexed): “No, my mom was like 20.”
Havig: “I think you mean that he’s in his 30s.”
Student 2: “Yeah, I didn’t mean he’s 30.”
Havig: “’Cause I’m going to be 30 in a few days, and I don’t feel like I’m old enough to be your parent.”
Student 2: “Yeah, I think you’re old enough.”
Much laughter from the class ensues, and I mock hurt from being called old. Another student explains to Student 2 why what she said was so funny.
Student 2: “Oh, I meant that you’re were old enough to have kids.”

Moment 5:
“Oh, crap! I just killed that hooker!”
- one small child’s parroting comment after watching some teenagers play Grand Theft Auto according to one of my third period kids.

Moment 6:
So, my third period class may have been discussing serial killers. Okay, I was telling them about a great moment in an episode of Criminal Minds where this guy (the un-sub) chops up his victims and puts pieces of them into the chili that he’s serving to the volunteers who are searching for the victims. How messed up is that!? There is this great line from this episode. A priest and one of the investigators is questioning the un-sub about one of the victims whose body has not been found. After way more searching on the World Wide Web than I’d like to admit, I found that the character’s name was Tracey Lambert. Anyway, they keep asking "Where is Tracey Lambert?" The un-sub goes on a tangent about God. The priest states, “God is inside all of us.” To which the un-sub replies, “So is Tracey Lambert.” Then a bunch of clips run showing the volunteers eating the chili con Tracey Lambert. Awesome! As I was telling them about this episode--which had everything to do with what we were discussing in class at the time, I swear--the following exchange occurred:

Havig: “So this serial killer was hacking up bodies, as serial killers sometimes do.”
Student: “Hacking, like (cough, cough)?

It took me a few minutes to regain my composure after that one. I guess from this day forward, I must differentiate between the hacking that serial killers do with knives and the hacking that my cats do to get rid of hairballs.