more school stories

Our school district issued macbooks to all the teachers who applied for one, so I type you this post from a shiny little white mac. I love it. I hope my clunky Dell doesn't get jealous, because I'll have to go back to that if (when) I stop working in Austin.

Things overheard in my classroom this week:

"I'm intelligent."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know, but I know it's good!"

"I don't want a fancy engagement ring. I want a simple engagement ring and a really fancy wedding ring. I don't know why people do it the other way around."
(I interrupt this story and ask if they, as 5th graders, aren't a little too young to talk about what kind of engagement rings they want. She answers that no, they're not too young and that they also talk about how many kids they want to have and other things that I probably don't want to know.)

"Thank you for teaching us this!"
(This almost knocked me off my rocker. I was teaching a small group how to turn an improper fraction into a mixed number and one of the kids said this. I kinda laughed and he looked at me seriously, saying "No, really. I've been wanting to know this!" Amazing. A highlight of my week.)

"God is speaking!"
(In my fourth grade class, I turned on the overhead, which I don't use very often, so the lens was facing toward the ceiling instead of toward the wall. So, I guess he said this because it was projecting the light on the ceiling. I laughed and he liked that I found him funny. The next day, I was giving him a mini lecture on his behavior and he told me he wished God spoke more often. I told him I wished he did, too.)

"Miss, you're a good singer! You should try out for American Idol with that song!"
(I taught them a song to help them remember the order of operations - you know, parentheses, exponents, multiply, divide, add and subtract from left to right. They thought it was pretty great. One girl even came up to the front to be my backup dancer.)