Kule.

Found a note in my trash on the way out the door today. Feeling the desire for a bit of early teen-aged gossip (most notes are between girls demanding advice on who they should start to like), I glanced over it. In said note, one girl complained to another that her class was boring. Student in my class said that she should add my class instead. Other student response? "I wish! Miss _______ is sooooo Kule, with a K!!"

I'm not really sure what that means, exactly, but I'm assuming it is some kind of ultra powered cool. And not that I want my entire reputation as a teacher to be based solely on whether or not my class is pure entertainment, this gave me quite the ego boost as it means I've finally accomplished something I always wanted for some strange reason when I was an early teen: to be called cool by other early teens. Only took me a decade to get there, but still. . .

Score.

We love you Conrad, oh yes we doooo. . .

Something very strange happened during my sixth period today. This class is admittedly very social, but for some reason nearly all of the boys were in their desks and working when the bell rang, and large chunks of girls filtered in giggling and squealing and being altogether too hormonal all at once. More than was strictly necessary at least.

Students were working well enough on their bellwork, though, until I made the mistake of saying the word "library". This was about the point when twenty-odd girls all squealed like mad. Deafeningly so.

Me: "Ok, what is going on?!"

Girls (in unison): "REALLY HOTT DISNEY STAR IS HERE!"

Me: ". . . who?"

Girls (in unison): "REALLY HOTT DISNEY STAR IS IN OUR LIBRARY RIGHT NOW! CAN WE PLEASE GO AND SEE HIM?!"

Me: (unsympathetically): "No."

This precipitated a deluge of bribes and pleads, including promises of chocolate (tempting), money (illegal?), 'but he's my future husband!' claims (unlikely - he's probably closer to my age than theirs!), and (my favorite) - the 'But I'll DIE if I don't go!' (I'd like to see it.)

To make things worse for these poor hormonally charged wee-women, I showed no mercy. I closed the blinds so that they could not see out of the windows. I drew a "picture" on the board of said Disney star so that they could have "no excuse" for wanting to go, since he was already here. I would occasionally look out of the blinds and say "Oh look I think I see- oops. Not him."

So while they didn't get as much work done as they perhaps should have. . . I had all kinds of fun toying with them.

Is that wrong?

I'm going to need more detail with that.

We're working on a project to help students with the basic elements of fiction right now. I'd completely forgotten that this kind of thing was ever necessary in school. You mean there was a time that someone had to explain to me what the word "plot" meant? Crazy.

To help get all the elements down, we're having students come up with the story of a superhero, a villain, and the conflict between them. Today was superhero day. Some of my students went to town, coming up with all sorts of crazy superhero power ideas from the conventional ("Can I have EVERY superhero power?!"/"Yes. As long as you have a weakness.") to the insane ("My power is that I can whistle and then boys come flying toward me!")

So ultra-annoyed-and-talks-too-much-student comes up to me to check off his super hero. Very defiantly, said student has decided to try and sabotage my project by coming up with a lame idea so that I can get mad and justify a reaction. Super power? Bending knees. I read through it and very kindly (and obnoxiously) said "I've never thought about that being a super power before. I think that's very creative. Now I'm going to need more detail from you in these two boxes. . . "

Student looked at me like I'd just pulled a rug out. It was pretty fantastic. Ultra-annoying student? 0. Me? 1.