Monday, October 23, 2006

Readin', Lyin', and Arithmetic

Whew! It's been quite a day. First cat out of the bag this morning
(No cats, no bags. That would be too much fun, like a cat rodeo.)
a student asked me to read The Scarlet Letter. I did, because, well,
it's kind of like my jooooob. Gosh! The things I'm expected to do!
I don't like Hawthorne. He's a pretentious windbag who could have
told that story in about 10 pages if he would have laid off that
flowery language. And don't even ask me about The House of the
Seven Gables, because I never could figure that one out.

Anyhoo...the kids were supposed to read chapers 1-5 over the
weekend. Yeah. That's gonna happen. We only got through 1 & 2
in about 30 minutes. Hey! It's not MY fault the kids won't read
on their own. They know from last year when we read The Odyssey
that if they wait for me to read to them, we only get through about
half of what they are assigned. Thank goodness the brains of the
outfit informed me that Chapter One didn't even start until page 41.
I would have needlessly read the Preface or some such thing.
And the only thing worse than 40 pages of Preface is 40 pages
of Hawthorne Preface!

Of course the class was all boys. They were not real impressed
with the description of Hester's finely-stitched fancy-shmancy dress
and her elaborately-detailed accessory, the big red A. What they
DID notice, and commented at the end of Chapter 2, was: "That
author is a pervert. All he talks about is her 'bosom'. Why can't
he just say 'chest'?" Which reminds me of another class, who said
that Mark Twain only knew two words: 'melancholy' and 'gay'.
They wondered why Tom sat down at the table and wished he
could be 'gay'.

My math class tried to pull a fast one on me by saying they had
already learned about multiplying exponentials in their regular math
class. I suppose they thought by doing that, I would say, "OK, then.
We won't do anything for the rest of the hour." Umm...NO! Since
they told me they'd learned it, I only put two examples on the board,
and gave them 15 problems. Let's see...the high score was 93%,
then there were several 50s, and so on until the three 0s. So we
will be going over that skill tomorrow.

Next feline out of the rodeo chute, a kid told the class he had a great
big monkey on his porch at home. "I got it at Six Flags. It's as big as
Mrs. Hillbilly Mom!" he declared. Another student didn't believe him,
so the kid behind him said, "I kid you not--that thing is FREAKIN'
HUUUUGE!" I had to say, "Umm...I'm RIGHT HERE! You don't
have to talk about me like that! You are hurting my self-esteem."
Then they were kind of embarrassed, because that is not the way
they meant it. Oh, some classes would have, but not this one.

The afternoon was kind of uneventful. But to make up for it, I had
a math inservice thingy after school. It was supposed to last until
4:15, but went on until 4:40. I was not a very happy camper. And
to blow campfire smoke in my face, one of the 6 attendees answered
her cell phone 4 (FOUR!) times during the meeting. That is just rude.
Nobody else had their cell phone on. What is the world coming to?
Round up those handbaskets again.

Tomorrow I have to chaperone the Fall Dance. Or as we alleged
devil-worshippers dare refer to it: HALLOWEEN Dance. So I
will have a short post tomorrow, what with driving back to school
for that little slice of Heaven.

2 comments:

Queen Of Cheese said...

Math inservice AND the devils dance.....how do you get so lucky?

Hillbilly Mom said...

Mrs.,
I suppose it is Karma.