Last Friday was my last day with the 8th grade honors Language Arts class I have been teaching. Their teacher, who was out on maternity leave, is coming back to finish the year with them. Usually when I finish an assignment, I feel like, "goodbye, good riddence." But I really liked this group of students. They were smart, respectful, and eager to learn. If all classes I taught were like these students, I would have considered getting a teaching credential and doing this full time.
So as the first class began, two girls came up to me and asked if they could go talk to another teacher about an incident the day before. When they came back five minutes later, they came in with cookies, chips and dip, soda, etc. and said, "presenting Mrs. Benson's going away party." All of the kids had brought treats in and so I set lesson plans aside for a little while and had fun with the students. As you can see, a party for 8th graders is simply eating goodies, writing on the white board, and NOT doing class work.
When the next class came in, since they hadn't planned a party, we did our classwork but the last 15 minutes of class, I told them to put their things away--we were going to have a backpack scavenger hunt. I would call out things like an eraser, a blue folder, a t-shirt, a flashdrive, and the first person who could get it on my desk (without chucking it at me) got a piece of candy. It is amazing how quickly they could produce something for me when there was a piece of chocolate on the line. When we were finished, one of the students said, "Mrs. Benson, this is the most fun I've had at school...EVER!"
One more funny experience in connection with this assignment. The teacher had a life size cut out of Legolas from Lord of the Rings in her classroom. It stood in the corner staring at all of us and really freaked me out the first few weeks I was in her room. She told me the student were not to touch it. Knowing how particular she was about this, another teacher decided to let Legolas have a little adventure while his owner was away. So he put an apron on him and took him to the HomeEc room, had him lie down in the nurses office, took him golfing with the golf team, took him up on the roof to help fix the AC, all the while taking pictures of his expeditions which will be put together in a slide show to show Liza where Legolas had been while she was out having a baby. I can't wait to see her reaction.
5 comments:
My comment has nothing to do with your party...we already talked about it. But I can't believe what junior high girls look like these days. The boys look about the same as they did when I was in junior high, but the girls, YIKES! Maybe it's best that I don't have girls. I certainly don't want to deal with clothing issues... not just modesty, but dressing way too old. I can easily see how some of these girls might find themselves in trouble with a MUCH older guy.
I love your blog... I am horrible at commenting though so you will have to forgive me for the lack of comments. I love hearing about your teaching adventures. I student teach in January. I taught a 6th grad and an 8th grade class last semester and it was pretty funny. I am sure it is a lot different up here in Idaho. All my education teachers tell me that the schools in this area are a lot different than those in bigger cities. I still have had funny experiences with farmer kids... it gets interesting.
I hope you are doing fabulously well. Have a good one.
How sweet was that. you must have made a great impression on those students... or they just wanted a party. JK! Im sure they all loved you!
You know Lauri, I knew you'd be a great teacher. I have enjoyed so much reading all the stories. Do you remember when we were in Biology and it was your turn to go get the item to "disect" how do you spell that? Anyway, you picked up the giant earthworm screamed and threw it across the room. I thought Danny Durkin was going to pee his pants. We cracked so many micro scope slides. Anyway, what a great feeling to know these students loved your class.
I wish my teachers had been like you!! Do you have a fun summer planned?
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