Absolutely (Story of a Girl)

Ok I'll let you in on a little secret. When I'm trying to name my posts, I come up with a theme and then I do a search on my iTunes for a song title with that theme in it. So this time I typed in "story" because I haven't really told many funny ones yet. And "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" came up, which I thought was very appropriate because just a few weeks ago my coworkers and I were at a local pub that was hosting trivia night. One of the rounds was a listening round, where they basically went through a random iTunes playlist and you had to name the artist. Needless to say, I kicked ass. And when this song came up, I didn't hesitate one bit and wrote down "Nine Days" before my coworkers even knew what was happening. And gave the full title, parenthetical included. Because I grew up in the nineties/early 2000s and lived by my WHFS 99.1 (RIP!). But I digress.

Snapshots of this year's kids...

Girl: "Whoa did anybody else see that? It was like.. everything went black."
Boy: "Yea me too! You noticed it too?"
Girl: "What was that? Ms. Chew, what was that.. everything went black!"
Ms. Chew: "Uhh.. I think it's called blinking."

Some of my boys kept asking me if I was going to D-Day, if I was ready for D-Day, and I honestly have no clue what D-Day they're refering to was. So one day, when they asked me if I was ready for D-Day..

Ms. Chew: "I don't know about D-Day, but I'm always ready for P-Day."
Boys: "P-Day? What's that?"
Ms. Chew: "Physics day!"
Boys: "Physics day? When's that?"
Ms. Chew: "Everyday is Physics day!"

It was a geeky moment, get over it. BUT every day they see me they yell "Ms. Chew! P-DAY!!!" And they tell me how sad they are when they don't have P-Day because of the block scheduling. Cute.

One day in the hallway I was telling one of my boys to hurry up and get to class, so I made an arm pumping motion like I was scooting along. He thought it was the funniest thing and now I can make him laugh at any time by summoning the "hurry up dance." (I think this one is funnier if you saw me do the motions. Lo seinto.)

In the beginning of the year I give my students an "All About Me" info sheet to fill out. This year I told them that whatever name they put in the "I prefer to be called:" space is what I'll call them all year long, so beware. They were allowed to put anything short of racial or other slurs and anything that could be construed as sexual harassment, if they wanted me to call them "Little Johnny Paper Boy" I would. Some of the fun names I get to call my kids by this year.. Penguin, Iron Mike, BBoy Shadow, and Little Johnny Paper Boy. Names I refused.. Baba (from my Cantonese kid) and Christ (I'm a little concerned that he's actually serious. He writes it on his papers).

We have pigeons that live on the third floor of our building. It's gross and it's not okay. They poo everywhere and this year it's really gotten out of control. Four of the five science classrooms are in the main hallway, what we call the Circle of Crap. So last week we decided to draw some attention to the problem and show how serious we are about getting something done. We wore bright pink ponchos from Walgreens during passing periods. The kids got a big kick out of it and the administration finally took notice (although nothing's changed yet). We got to say things like...

Kid: "Ms. Chew, why are you guys wearing that?"
Ms. Chew: "For protection."
Kid: "From what?"
Ms. Chew: "For the poo!!"

and

Kid: "Ms. Chew, it's not raining outside."
Ms. Chew: "Oh but it's raining inside."
Kid: "No it's not!"
Ms. Chew: "It is. It's raining poo!!"

and sometimes I didn't even speak, I just pointed to the fresh new pile outside my doorway. Don't even get me started on the mint chocolate chip greens or flaming hot Cheetoh reds we get on a regular basis. Or the scrambled egg. Yum. The real funny thing is some of the kids really hadn't noticed until we brought it up. Or even denied that there were pigeons inside until we pointed at their butts hanging over the rafters, waiting to strike. It's so bad that I actually know the sound of pigeons taking a crap. Uggg. But today after school some boys were hanging around and they decided to wear our ponchos. We had three kids wearing bright pink ponchos, and a fourth wearing the bright green poncho with an additional plastic bonnet (with visor!) running around the school after hours. It was fantastic.

That's all I can think of for now. On a more serious note, we rematched against our soccer rival (see previous post) today and lost pretty miserably. At least it wasn't pouring, but it wasn't a good game. It was fun though, to see our boys play and support them. Some of last year's senior players came out to watch and we got to catch up with them and hear what they're up to these days. Two of the boys are at Heald College and kid with the red shoes is at Foothill College. The real disappointment, though, is Phillip. He did not look so good today, was all decked out in red accessories from head to toe, and is not taking any classes anywhere. Keep in mind that this is last year's soccer superstar prom king. I'm worried for him, but at list his brother CM is still at the school so we can check in on him from time to time. It would be really nice to NOT see him go down that path. Le sigh.