Student Stories

Why hello, old friend.

I feel as if I hardly have time to blog any more. :-( This is sad. I went through a couple of my most recent posts, and I realize that I haven't talked about my kids at all lately! So I will share a few stories from the middle school world:

1. Last night Rex and I had a bunch of friends over to play Apples to Apples. At school yesterday, one of my students asked what I was doing this weekend. I told her, and she had never heard of the game Apples to Apples. I tried to explain it: "Well, there are these adjective cards, and then you have to pick out of a bunch of noun cards..." She cut me off with, "Mrs. Webb, that sounds like the nerdiest game ever. Your friends are teachers, aren't they? And you guys probably sit around and joke about things like HA HA LOOK AT THAT ADJECTIVE!" Rather than try to explain myself, I just said that yes, that's what we do on the weekends. Ha ha!

2. A few weeks ago we had a cold spell (which in Vegas means anything below 65 degrees). Students were all bundled up in their winter clothes, and a group of African American students were begging me to let them spend recess inside. I said no, that they needed to suck it up because it was NOT that cold out. One of them tried to convince me by saying, "But Mrs. Webb! Our ancestors are from AFRICA! We're not used to this kind of cold weather!" I told them to just think African thoughts and that maybe they could channel the climate of their "ancestors." The group immediately started dancing around chanting random gibberish that sounded like it belonged in the opening credits of either "The Lion King" or the TV show "Survivor." After a few minutes of this, the student came back to me and said, "Hey! It worked! I'm feeling warmer now!" Great, kiddo. I'm sure that had nothing to do with the fact that you had been dancing around for the past few minutes.

3. One of our vocabulary words last week was "picturesque." We always practice our vocabulary words by saying some sentences aloud in class that use that word. After class, one of the boys came up to me and said, "I wanted to use the sentence 'Mrs. Webb is very picturesque,' but I didn't want to get made fun of by the other boys so I figured I would just tell you after class." Awww...too bad brownie points don't translate into actual points.

4. One of the craziest boys in my class brought me flowers one day. Correction: his mom bought me flowers and told him to give them to me. She gives me random presents sometimes to thank me for "dealing with her son." That's kind of funny if you ask me. Anyway, he brought the flowers to school. In the hallway between walking in the door and getting to my class, he and his friends started wrestling over the flowers. When he got to me, he handed me the pathetic bunch and said "These are for you...but they got kind of messed up." I kid you not: it was a bundle of stems and ONE of the stems had ONE petal on it. Ha ha ha!! I should have taken a picture to post. It was so funny. It was the flower bouquet equivalent of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. Oh well...it's the thought that counts?

5. I routinely call my students my "homies." One day after class one of them came up to me and said, "Mrs. Webb, I know you're white, but are you 100% white? Like, totally?" Yes. "Well, it doesn't seem like it sometimes. That's kinda weird." Coming from a black student, I think I'll take that as a compliment.

6. A few weeks ago I had students do presentations on some grammar concepts that we learned. Quite a few students decided to do songs or raps. I will tell you - my class was ROCKIN that day! The students decided to start calling my classroom "Club Webb," and they said I should get a giant neon "W" to put on my door. It's always a party in Language Arts. :-)

7. Two of my students who sit with their desks adjacent to each other were fighting over where their binders go. I walked up and said, "Boys, what seems to be the problem?" One of them replied, "We're having a dispute over territory." I said, "Well stop it, because neither of you own any territory at all in here. It's all mine." The other boy turned to his friend and said, "That's true dude. She owns, like, the whole KINGDOM." Yes, I am the queen. Surprisingly, that stopped the fight. Ha ha!

8. Yesterday my eighth graders walked into class after recess, and I was having a difficult time getting them to quiet down. I went up to the board and started talking with a deep southern accent: "Howdy y'all. I'd sure love to git this here class started, but I cain't rilly do that now can I? Anyway, if y'all would get out yer writin notebooks, I'd be much obliged..." by this point, everyone was staring at me as if I were trying to teach in Russian because I sounded so weird. I switched back to my normal voice and said, "Awesome, thanks. I just needed you to be quiet," and went on with my lesson. I'm pretty sure that some of my students think I have a screw loose.


Well, that should be enough for now. I really need to start writing these funny things down as they happen so that I can remember to blog them for you. I will try to do better!