You got WHAT in the WHERE?

Well, there's always a first for everything...I got punched in the nose today. Yes, you read that right, a student punched me in the nose. She didn't mean to, it was entirely an accident. It was hilarious! She is, of course, mortified. Let me set the scene for you...

In AP Psychology, we're learning about research. I'm doing an activity to help students think about all the different aspects of an experiment. I didn't actually think up this activity myself - it came with a series of lesson plan ideas from TOPSS (an association for high school psychology teachers). Anyway, it involves testing reaction times of students. They have some great activities and lesson ideas that can be adapted for any classroom. I've used a bunch of their ideas. For this one, the idea is that you set up an experiment that is HUGELY flawed, and students have an opportunity to point out the flaws, until you think you have all accounted for. You start with the hypothesis that boys have a faster reaction time than girls, and you call up students to test that theory. You hold a ruler up over the student's hand, and they have to catch it between their thumb and forefinger. I had said student up in front of the room, and she was on her second trial (the first one she hadn't caught, so she was getting increasingly flustered). She caught the ruler, and, as I was leaning over to check where she had caught it so we could keep track of our data, she raised her hand and bonked me on the nose. It didn't really hurt very much, she didn't get a chance to get much momentum, but it was a relatively good bonk, nonetheless.

I told her it was no big deal, and that there was a first time for everything. The whole class, of course, erupted into giggles (mostly nervous giggles, I think they were trying to figure out how I would react more than anything else). I think I handled it pretty well, actually. I had a laugh, and I told her it was fine, and when she kept apologizing, I told her it was ok, really.

And then we had a fire drill. So, business as usual.


My nose does kind of hurt a little bit, but I can't tell if it really hurts, or if I just think it hurts.