A Few Memorable Momments

As previously mentioned, I have switched into the wonderful world of teaching. I teach History (Ancient Civilizations) and Earth Science, along with a character ed class to a group of mostly 12 year old students. Each class has between 35-36 students in it and my classroom is pretty small, but we make do. Needless to say, between our room arrangement, the mind (and hormones) of a 12 year old, and my interesting subject matter....we have had some very interesting conversations! Here are just a few memorable quotes off the top of my head....

#1
Students: let's guess how old Mrs. Dennistoun is! (inward groaning on my part....)
24! 28! 26! (Ok, not so bad....)
34! (Excuse me!! No offense to 34 year olds...but that is not my age yet!)
No, I think she is more like 20! (Bless you child!)
Student who thought I was 34: SHE WISHES!!! (He was promptly dismissed from my classroom after that!)

#2
Before Thanksgiving break, I had my students do a reading comp sheet on the history of Thanksgiving....one of the things it mentioned that the pilgrims ate was cod fish. During this activity, I had a student very confused over this. He explained to me, that he was confused because every time you see COD on the internet, it stands for Call of Duty (a very popular video game amongst my students), and he thought the fish had something to do with the video game and it just didn't make sense to him! Oh goodness....

#3
One day we were working on creating a map of Ancient Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. Everything had to be created out of paper. As I was walking around the room observing my class' work, one of my boys, was quite upset and said, "Mrs. Dennistoun, it looks like a kindergartner made it!" I just smiled, because let's be honest, it was pretty bad, but I tried to encourage him to keep going. His response, "Arts and crafts just aren't my thing, my mom never bought my coloring books when I was little!" (I laughed over this for a long time...take note to my future self....buy your kids lots and lots of coloring books!)

#4 (My favorite from this year so far....)
We are out at lunch and a few boys are kicking something around in the dirt. I just knew trouble was coming. A few minutes later one of them runs up very upset about this thing in the dirt, but can't explain what it was. The second boy runs up and tells us that it is a "conceptual toy." HUH??? What are these boys talking about? The third one clarifies...."You know, it's what a boy uses to not get a girl pregnant." Oooohhhhhh....... Apparently, after dark, our campus is a great place for some hanky panky to take place!

I'm sure that these stories are much funnier to me since I was there, and I know there are many more, but I have been so bad about writing them down. As they happen, I will record them here, so at least I have them writen somewhere, and maybe every once in awhile, someone else will get a laugh out of them as well!