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.

ECMOA for the Month of October, 2008 Part II

Here’s the second half of awesome moments from the month of October. By the way, if you are extra bored or have some time, you should check out my other blog, Stupid Baby Names and Other Things that Bug Me. You can find it at stupidbabynames.blogspot.com. I have quite a few name rants in the works plus I’m reviewing the best and the worst of holiday songs.

I’m going to break them up by the classes as opposed to individual moments just for kicks.

From the freshmen:

One student had forgotten to write his or her name on a vocab quiz, so I took it around the classroom to find the owner.
Havig: “Does anyone want to claim this?”
Student: “There’s no name on it…oh.”

Student 1: “Ms. Havig, who do you think would make a better president, McCain or Obama?”
Havig: “Well, since I’m a teacher, I’m not really supposed to share my political views with my students.”
Student 2: “Did you say a llama or Obama?”
Student 1 (sarcastically): “Obama. Yeah, who would make a better president, McCain or a llama?”

Student: “How do you spell, climb-ed?”
Now this may be one of those kinds of things where you had to be there to really appreciate the humor in this situation. After this student asked for some spelling assistance via exaggerated enunciation, it became an on-going joke to over emphasize the ed ending to most words.

From the seniors:

A student had this as part of a journal entry.
“You calling the kettle black is what old people usually say, which is funny because the metaphor doesn’t really make any sense.”

And finally from the sophomores:

“This is where they all hate each other.”
- in reference to the characters in second section of Joy Luck Club

It think this next one is my personal favorite from this round. The students received progress reports awhile back, and one of my students’ progress report was printed with the watermark on the paper upside down. Basically, the school printed some of the progress reports with the paper going the wrong way. Ah…education.

There are more on tap for November, so stay tuned.

ECMOA for the Month of October, 2008 Part I

Okay sports fans (that’s a colloquialism that I got from my dad), let’s be realistic. I am not very good at posting once a week like I used to be. I’m hoping for at least bi-weekly postings, but monthly postings may be what you get. To the four of you that actually read this blog, I thank you for your loyalty.

I’ve noticed that the majority of the moments these days are simply quotes from my students or conversations that I have overheard or have had with my students. I do miss the days of a particular student’s stories about how she broke her glasses or how she lost them (one apparently shouldn’t tape one’s glasses to one’s cat’s head). I’m realizing that the students who I had as freshmen when I first started the English Class Moments of Awesomeness are now seniors. How time flies.

On to the awesomeness!

Moment 1:
“Pale is the new tan.”
- one student to another student as they compared their tans, or lack there of

Moment 2:
“It’s like homework, you can only use it once.”
- student response to an assignment question regarding parental advice

Moment 3:
This was a side conversation that I had with one of my freshmen, and the seriousness of the question totally cracked me up.
Student: “Your tongue’s a muscle, right?”
Havig: “Yeah.”
Student: “So could you pull your tongue like if you really got into a piece of cheese cake?”
Havig: “I have no idea.”

Of course I spent the rest of the day craving some tasty cheese cake.

Moment 4:
If you don’t know me, let me summarize my personality for you as briefly as possible. Sarcasm is my personal dogma. I was also raised in a staunch Norwegian household where not only was crying an unacceptable form of communication, but expressing emotions of any sort was highly frowned upon. In fact, it was a sign of weakness. Needless to say, I’m not the teacher that students run to with their little teenage drama episodes. My fourth period class even had a conversation about my lack of touchy-feeliness. With that in mind, enjoy this next moment.

During a vocab quiz, a student made a bizarre sound like a cross between dry heaving and a hic-up. I looked in her direction looking between her and another student inquiring what the noise was and who made it.

Student 1: “I hic-uped.”
Student 2: “Don’t judge. We all hic-up.”
Havig: “Not like that.”
Student 2: “Oh, harsh.”
Student 1: “Way to be a supportive teacher.”
Havig (with a sigh): “We’ve gone over this.”

Moment 5:
My 4th period class was out of control on a Friday a few weeks ago after we had an assembly. They were all fired up and couldn’t really control themselves. After showing them my great annoyance with their behavior, they tried to convince me that they weren’t annoying, just really spirited. They were trying to claim that they made my day more interesting.
One student who I had as a freshman last year tried to make her point.

Student: “Remember how last year you would tell a joke, and no one laughed except for me?”
Havig (skeptically): “Right.”
Student: “Well, isn’t this much better? Everyone laughs at you. (awkward pause as she realizes what she said.) Not like that.”

Ahh, in the immortal words of Bill Cosby, kids say the darndest things.

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.