Ok, this is hilarious

Even though this requires listening to a Backstreet Boys song (although you can turn the sound off), it is worth the time. These guys crack me up!

A word of advice to middle school students everywhere...

Dropping an entire bottle of cologne in the hallway is not funny. Spilling an entire bottle of aforementioned cologne in your friend's locker is also not funny. Spraying yourself with half a bottle of cologne will not make up for the fact that you have not taken a shower in a week. Take a shower. Please. For the love of all that is beautiful in this world, take a shower. Really. If there was ever a time in your life that you should, nay, MUST take a shower, it would be every day during your puberty years. Perhaps twice a day would not be asking too much.

This has been a public service announcement. Your friends, family, peers and teachers will thank you.

Oh, and use soap.

There's a whale in the Thames

Really. Thanks to the Londonist for bringing this piece of information to our attention (and thanks also for some wonderfully amusing prose about it as well). You can also go here to see what the BBC has to say about it. The Londonist also has a link for some wonderful photos, if you're interested. So is the whale just sightseeing? Perhaps he was interested in see the Houses of Parliament, or perhaps the Tate Modern. I mean, London really is one of the greatest cities in the world, and I believe it was Pepys who said that the man who can't find anything to do in London isn't alive (although it could have been anyone, it was quoted to me by my father) or something along those lines. I'm quite certain I'm horribly mashing up the quote, so don't quote me on that (ha ha ha), but you get the idea.

You mean she STILL hasn't updated it?

Don't you just hate it when you go to your favorite blog (or even the blog you occasionally visit just to see what's up), and you find that it hasn't been updated yet...and it's been months? I know I certainly do. Drives me nuts. Makes me want to e-mail the person and give them the ole e-mail throttle. Or something.

It's called irony. I know, I know, I'm awful about writing here. And it's not for lack of things that I want to write about. Here's a sampling of the things that have popped into my head as of late:

Why my gym needs an F-chip (instead of a V-chip).
Sharing the classroom with another teacher
Sharing students with another teacher (two separate topics, really)
Why putting 2400 children into one building is a bad idea during a full moon on Friday the 13th.

I'm sure there's more. Anyway, I promise to be better from now on. I really do want to write about that stuff, so I'll be along shortly with a post or two.


Really.

My least favorite question...

I know that they probably don't mean it the way it sounds when they ask "Are we doing anything today?". Or, even better "Are we doing anything important today?" Now, granted, not every single minute of every single one of my classes holds equal importance (one could argue that in a progression of increased knowledge, excellent planning and fabulous teaching, each moment is more important than the last, but that would require a hell of a lot of ego, so we won't argue that, now will we?), but given that I work hard to plan meaningful lessons and I take the time to research the content, the question "Are we doing anything (important) today?" is vastly insulting. Most of the time I get the question when the student has to leave class for some reason (doctor's appointment, choir/band/orchestra concert, field trip for another class, press conference), and they are trying to assess what it is they are going to miss while they are out of class. With my AP students, frequently the question means that the student is weighing whether or not they really want to miss class in favor of whatever it is that they have been offered as an alternative. If it's going to be a lot of new material, the student will opt to stay in class rather than miss out. With my World history students, who are younger, and frequently less mature, they seem to mean the question a bit more. And usually the question comes not in advance of the missed class, as it does with the AP student, but the day after the missed class ("I was sick, Ms. H, really!"). "Did we do anything yesterday?" Oh gosh, no, I'm sorry, we sat around twiddling our thumbs for 95 minutes. You didn't miss a thing. Thank goodness you're here, I was worried that we would never finish the French Revolution at this rate.

I know, I know. They don't really mean it the way it sounds. They are, after all, only 15 or 16 years old. And they really do mean "What do I/will I need to make up?" It's just such thoughtless phrasing that bugs the crap out of me, ok?