Notes from the Margins: Teacher Edition

I think anyone who goes to any job in the world every single morning, day in and day out, knows that if you don't find little ways to entertain yourself or make it more exciting, you may very well go insane. Anyone who teaches middle school for a living is probably certifiably insane anyway, but my job is no exception to this little mantra.

I will stop what I'm doing and have conversations out loud with myself when my students are not paying attention. I will slam a book shut and make them all stand up and walk around the room when they look like they are falling asleep. I will creep over to a corner of my classroom and make odd noises, timing how long it takes them to realize I am not even at the front of the room anymore when they are "off-task."

However---hands down---my favorite form of entertainment is writing comments on their turned-in papers and assignments as I grade them. Recently, as I sifted through a ridiculously massive pile of graded work that I needed to input in my gradebook, I glanced down at some of the comments I'd written to these kids. Some of these papers were so old that I didn't even remember when I graded them or that I had written the comment, but I found myself laughing.

I don't know if these kids actually read the comments I diligently write on everything they turn in, but if they do, I hope they are getting a little laugh as well. Now that I'm conscious of some of the absurd things I am writing in response to their work, I'm making efforts each time I grade for my "constructive criticism" to also be at least a little bit entertaining for them. I figure they could use a little humor in the midst of my not-always-super-positive-or-friendly feedback.

And, as you might have guessed, I made sure to document all of my most off-the-wall handiwork, which I will share with you now......

I give you: Notes from the Margins: Teacher Edition





This student is reading one of the Percy Jackson novels, and inquired as to what a "manticore" was. I couldn't remember, so I responded with this.






Later on in that same assignment, I found out the kid had gone and Googled it, which I had also done. On a related note....Manticores are very creepy looking:







This girl "realized the punctuation was not correct" in the book she was reading. I...was...EXCITED.






Of course I have to question this kid's legitimacy and street cred if he is questioning whether or not zombies are real!! He later came up to me and asked if he had lost any points due to this comment...







My students are obsessed with incorporating my name or personal life into their written responses, example sentences, quiz answers...anything. "Ms. Townes is very gregarious on her good days." I suppose she could've written much, much worse.





And again. "Ms. Townes likes to mediate when there is horseplaying going on." What?! Horseplaying in a middle school classroom? Never.






After informing me he would only be responding to the name "Big Dog Savage" from this assignment on, I decided to indulge the kid's ridiculous request at least once. "Big Dog Savage, Good work. You made a 100. --Ms. Townes"






Okay...I get a lot of weird gibberish turned in to me, but I could not come up with a translation for this one. "Yelp, I saw an extraordinary and omit of disappointment, from the movie the Paranormal Activity 2. I sure know now why they called it choronic because it was deffinitely a waste of my time." Um....wtf? Zero.





I graded and wrote this on 67 quizzes before I realized I might want to come up with a better acronym for deducting points for incorrect "part of speech," or "P.O.S." 1/2 off, piece of.....






The student's thoughts? "It's official Count Olaf is a creeper. He looks and sounds like one. This is a weird book." My comment? Creepers need love too!










What exactly does it mean to "have a stretched butt?" I am at a loss.








Sometimes, I respond to their work as if I have a British accent. At least 2 sentences please, good sir!







This student's Double Entry Journal reads "I hate when that happens because then I always wish I had the Force to bring it over to me. When I do that, my mom or dad walks and then they call me weird." These kids are either epically awesome in their continued Star Wars allusions, or they know how to suck up with the best of 'em. Either way, I am digging it.




The assignment was to write a parody of a well-known children's story, and this student chose Little Red Riding Hood. We are adamantly working on grammar and spelling, however, so that Grandma never gets "raped up with some rope" ever, ever again.







Originally, my comment to this simply read "I lol-ed here. You kill me!" I then went back and added the (metaphorically, with laughter) so as to avoid sticky interpretations of what I had written.





Student: "How did he prove Hitler wrong. Was Hitler a raceist man?"
Teacher: "YES. The Holocaust???.........(head explodes).





Sometimes, I might be a little bit too snarky. "How can a human just magically fly. You can't fly around anything." My response? "In a plane." Of course, this is the same student who asked if Hitler was racist, so.....................................yeah.



And finally, some other random little notes or tidbits picked up here and there on any given schoolday.

"Ms. Townes, life in the world is like a box. That's why I drew you as a mermaid so you can be free."




"Ms. Townes a ass-hole because she talk to much." Self-explanatory?




My affinity for Diet Coke even made it on to the Algebra test!




That's all (for now) folks! I'll leave y'all with an image from the heygirlteacher tumblr (if you haven't been there yet....Go!) that is super appropriate given the content of this blog post:

Why thank you, Ryan Gosling. :)

Middle Ages Halloween

I went to a Renaissance Festival last weekend.

Go ahead, make your fun. I'll admit that I was fully planning on making fun of myself for going as well.

HOWEVER.

Boy, was I wrong about Renaissance Festivals. In a word? AWESOME. There were wenches, knights, jousts, dragons, tree people, homeless fairies, and ALE, among other awesome things.

My one regret from my first Renaissance Festival is that I personally did not dress as a medieval character, nor did any of my comrades. I also concluded that the only thing better than going to a Renaissance Festival....is going to a Renaissance Festival on Halloween weekend.

Not only do you have all of your crazies dressed as dragons and knights, but you also have individuals walking around in all sorts of other out-of-theme costumes including, but not limited to, Iron Man, Jason Voorhees, Harry Potter, and Asian children dressed as Batman.

And let's please pay proper homage to the many, many creepy points this man added to the festival by showing up dressed like this.....

(in case you don't see it, i'm talking about this uber creepy molester-esque grown man dressed as a clown)

Now for my favorite character of the day. He was followed VERY closely by the jousting knight with Heath Ledger's Joker face paint and the Asian Batman children, but he pulled out the win. I don't think I ever actually saw the guys' face, but he was parading around the Renn Festival all day with a troop of wonderful freaks all dressed in the most realistic and comprehensive dragon costumes I'd ever seen. As they walked by, I was thinking "Norwegian Ridgeback! Hungarian Horntail! Chinese Crested!", but then I remembered this was the middle ages, not Hogwarts.


oh don't mind me y'all. I'm just over here doing dragon stuffs.

As you can imagine, after consuming the finest ales and ciders the Middle Ages had to offer, we had to relieve ourselves from time to time. Don't be mistaken though. This was done in the privies, definitely not in bathrooms.


However, we would have had to consume a LOT more than we did to render our money or services at "Feathers of Pleasure." Your guess is as good as ours as to who in the Renn Festival marketing department thought that was the best name possible for this particular merchant.


I have a hunch that whoever was behind "Feathers of Pleasure" was also behind this little establishment.....


Oh, and here is the dragon again. Just hanging out with his dragon friends while a crowd of onlookers watches in awe.


I wouldn't suggest going to a Rennaisance Festival if you are unable to shed any aversion you may have to all things creepy or weird. This girl was dressed as what can best be described as an anime wood nymph fairy and was "granting" small children's wishes. Not at all disturbing....

About halfway through the day, it dawned on me. You know, the reason I was enjoying the Renaissance Festival so much?

Being at a Renaissance Festival is the closest I will ever get to being a part of Middle Earth.

Unless I buy a plane ticket and fly to New Zealand to walk the Lord of the Rings trail to Mordor with Dwight Schrute, a Renn Festival is the next best thing. Albeit the wizards are nowhere near as cool as Gandalf and the Rohirrim could take the Renn Festival knights in a joust any day, it was close enough for me.

And look, Treebeard was even there!

(there's a real person in there, dressed as a giant, talking tree. awesome!)


Enough of my LotR/Renn Faire nerdgasm for today, though. Let's talk about Halloween.

I spent Halloween with the 8th graders of course, seeing as it fell on a Monday. The teachers at my school were definitely encouraged to dress up, and I went through a number of thought processes trying to decide what to wear to school that day.

The first and foremost thing I had to keep in mind was that the costume had to be "school appropriate." I use this phrase so often in my classroom, I sometimes have to stop and remind myself what I even mean by it. Basically, "school appropriate" when you teach 8th grade means nothing that will spark even remotely perverted thoughts, nothing illegal or immoral, and no full face masks or hats.

First, I was going to dress in 80s workout garb and go as "1987," but I thought that concept might be lost on a room of people born in 1998. Then, I was going to go as the Cheshire Cat, but when I went to tape the purple duct tape around my black shirt, there ended up being no good shirt location on which to place the tape without it being too tight here, accentuating a risque body part there, etc. etc.

Finally, I just borrowed a leopard print shirt from my roommate, put on cat ears and a cat tail, and went to school.

The next thing I had to worry about was the Halloween Dance occurring after school that day, mostly because I was the one in charge of it, being a student government sponsor and all. My cosponsor and I slapped up some decorations, paid the DJ, and hoped for the best.

Now, I had not been in attendance at a middle school dance since I attended middle school in 1999, and it soon became apparent that I had either gone to a very different type of middle school than the one where I currently teach, or middle school dances have simply changed.

I miss the days of middle school dances where slow songs were actually played. Remember those terrible slow songs from the late 90s?

Lyrical masterpieces such as Backstreet Boys "I Want it That Way," KC and JoJo's "Crazy," and Brian McKnight's "Back at One" were nowhere to be heard.

Awkward-"ass-out"-arms-stiff-and-locked slow dancing was nowhere to be found.

Males and females weren't even gawkily standing against walls, looking around longingly at the opposite sex wishing they had the kahunas to ask them to dance.

The only music played was rap or hip hop, I was taught how to "dougie," and there wasn't a slow song played the entire 2 hour duration of the dance. My cosponsor and I spent our time "white girl dancing" (as our students put it), and judging the costumes of the 6 students who actually showed up in one.

A 7th grader dressed as a red Teletubby won.


I was a leopard. She teaches science. Hence, her mad scientist costume. Behind us is a sparsely populated dance floor because apparently it's not "cool" to go to a middle school dance anymore. Sigh.

I bought a bottle of Cab Sauv and some Hershey kisses on my way home, and spent the rest of the evening handing out candy to the 3 trick-or-treaters I got. Mostly just drinking wine and eating all of the Hershey kisses on my couch as I watched Halloweentown on the Disney channel, though.

My life is apparently very sad, so I'll end on this positive note. I got a sweet hair cut and color with Nicole over at Salon 2000, and highly suggest you hit her up if you're looking to get your hair did.

This should be TWO thumbs up to chicks who know how to do some good hair :).

later yall.