I Just Love Jenny

Last Wednesday, my entire homeroom had to vote for two girls to be nominated for homecoming court. The criteria:

1. the girls have to be in the same homeroom class, which reduced potential candidates to 26.
2. the girls have to exist.

After every girl had written their nominations, I collected them and began to tally the votes. RC, an all-star from a previous entry, gave her paper to me and I couldn't help but laugh as I read.



Apparently, RC failed to read the second point of the criteria.

The first girl, BF, does exist and is one of her good friends.

The second girl, Jenny, does not. There's no Jenny in the entire 8th grade at our school. Needless to say, Jenny didn't win the nomination.

Snowmageddon, Floodageddon and I-Wanna-Kill-You-ageddon

Sunday

7:00 p.m.: I cross my fingers and pray that it snows "enough" to cancel school the next day.

7:49 p.m.: It snows a dreadful TWO INCHES and pretty much every school in western Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, northern Louisiana and eastern Arkansas are closed. I jump for joy.

7:50 p.m...................................................................................................................................................

Monday

..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... - 6:50 p.m.: Ab-so-lute-ly nothing.

6:53 p.m.: I find out that the neighboring school district - Shelby County Schools - is closed again the next day.

7:00 p.m.: BCS National Championship (which is equal in awe-worthy stature to meeting every Power Ranger at the same time)

11:30 p.m.: I look on the local news' website hoping to see that Memphis City Schools has cancelled classes. Get depressed. Decide to wake up at 4 a.m. to see what the decision was. Go to bed.

Tuesday

4:05 a.m.: My alarm goes off to start the day. My wife rolls over and tells me that school's not cancelled. I think about drinking the Clorox beneath our sink to create an excuse to go to the hospital instead of school.

6:40 a.m.: Arrive at school. Mrs. Willis says to me, "Is your room destroyed, too? Ms. Gunn's room is a disaster, she has a leak."

6:41 a.m.: Get to my room, slowly open the door and find nothing wrong.

6:42 a.m.: I hear the other teachers on my team talking in the hall, I look closely and realize that their rooms are submerged in two inches of nasty, chemically-treated water, in addition to a huge, murky puddle in the hall.

7:15 a.m.: Kids arrive, we ship them to the auditorium

7:32 a.m.: I realize how much my life is going to suck thanks to 160 devilish 8th graders in one confined space.

8:15 a.m.: Life still sucks.

10:42 a.m.: Life still sucks.

10:49 a.m.: Life still sucks.

11:40 a.m.: Mess is cleaned up, kids are bouncing off the walls, administration tells us that we should resume our day as normal.

11:42 a.m.: Life still sucks.

11:55 a.m.: The heathens arrive at the Classe di Lowe rowdier-than-ever.

11:57 a.m. - 2:05 p.m.: Completely useless time because half the kids were exhausted from talking themselves to death and don't want to pay attention to one, single word coming out of my mouf.

4:19 p.m.: Praying that it snows tonight.

Today's Sound Bites

Today offered some real gems as far as student interaction.

TB: "I don't know what to do. I keep closing that door, but it always seems to fly open. I keep trying to throw away the key to that problem, but somehow it always comes back to open up the lock. I'm sick of it."

I was soooooo stoked at her use of metaphor while speaking about the troubles in her life. Solid.

Now to the funny stuff.

The prompt was: "If you could be any animal for 48 hours, what would you be and why?"

JP: "I would be a monkey because they're awesome to watch and they make funny sounds like two fat people fighting over a piece of cheesecake."

As if J has ever seen - or heard - two fat people fighting over cheesecake...or skinny people fighting for cheesecake for that matter.

KM (one of the most laid back people I have EVER met): "I would be a lion because he has the sweetest job in the whole world. He just lays around under the trees all day and kills gazelles and...um...well, he kills gazelles and that's pretty sweet."

Fart Patrol

Today, in class, my students were given time to quiz one another using their flashcards before the test began. I have one boy in the class, TB, who could talk paint off of a wall. Honestly, if I offered the kid $1 million to not make a sound for 45 minutes, he'd crack in the first 30 seconds. The other students have noticed, and they hate it.

This conversation followed:

PH (female): "Mr. Lowe, could you make one exception and maybe turn around for like ten seconds so that I can go and slap TB so hard that he never talks again?"

Me: "P, you know, I hear where you're coming from, but you know I can't do that."

PH: "I really think you can, it wouldn't be all that long."

The girl sitting next to her, RG, is listening to the entire conversation because I was standing next to her desk talking to PH. All of the sudden, I get a faint whiff of something and I realize that, yes, it's a fart, and a nasty one at that. So I stay silent. I don't say a word. Right as I'm about to respond to PH, RG looks up at me and says:

RG: "Don't stand too close, I just farted."

It took everything I had in me to not laugh because this girl is so quiet and would never - or I previously thought - admit to such a rank, vile smell. Like I said in one of my first posts of this blog, these kids divulge EV.ER.Y.THING.

Santa Knows Your Wishes

Just a short one today...

As I prepared to do battle this morning, I realized how ill-prepared I was mentally to face the scoundrels. It was a sink-or-swim situation. I did notice something curious, however. The boys all showed up with shorter hair, which seems normal because it's a new year so you might as well cut it off to prepare for the next 11 months. The funny thing was how many girls showed up with new weaves.

Santa truly "knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake."

And he rewards you with a weave.

Me (to KM, a student with a distinctly different weave than pre-Christmas): "So, do you get weaves for Christmas?"

KM: "Oh, full of jokes. A jokester."

Me: "No, I'm being serious, does Santa bring weaves for Christmas. Did you get the hair for Christmas?"

KM (beaming): "Oh. Yeah! You like it?!"

I got a Wii. She got her hurr did. We're all winners.

No Place Like Home

Ahhhhhhh, Utah.

I'll admit that I was none too stoked to come home for Christmas, but my lovely wife threatened my life if I didn't come. So here I am. Now that I'm back, I must say that it's nice to be here, especially because it's snowing and I LOOOOVE snow and lots of it.

Last night, we decided to go snowboarding, so we headed up to Brighton Ski Resort to do some shreddin'. We got up to the ticket booth and the guy asked if we had our "half-off" coupons, we said no. The next thing is something you'd rarely find in Memphis: he told us how to get the coupon and was willing to accept the coupon on our phones. Incredible. The snow was also incredible. The pictures are a bit grainy, but it's awesome.



...and another...



I must say that being on the slopes was MUCH BETTER than being with a bunch of pre-/post-pubescent kids. Why, you might ask? Well here's a list.

1. Snow doesn't give me attitude.
2. Snow never called me a racist, especially since we're the same color.
3. I'd rather be freezing in the snow than baking in a classroom.
4. Explaining to my wife that she needs to stay heel-side is much easier than repeating for the 70th time a pronoun is not the same thing as a noun.
5. Snow doesn't talk back.
6. Snow doesn't steal my pencils.
7. Snow doesn't steal my stapler.
8. Snow's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Snowflake, never demand me to explain why Lil' Snowflake has a 17% in my class, even though he's been to class AT LEAST half the term!
9. Snow asked me to go to the restroom and I said no. Then, snow never asked again.
10. I can pee on the snow with no consequences. Especially lawsuits.

Utah is great...except for this prime example of Utahn parking.



There's no place like home.

"You a racist!"

The transcript from the events leading up to the realization that I am a racist. A little long, but worth the read:

AB: "Mr. Lowe, I need to use it (the restroom) real bad. I got to go! We gotta go!"

Me: "As soon as everyone's silent, we'll head to the restroom."

(Most of the girls begin to settle down, but AB won't shut her mouth. I just stand and wait. Their fate is in their own hands)

AB: "MR. LOWE! I gotta USE IT!"

Me: "A, as soon as you're silent, we'll go, but you're the only one that's talking."

(She keeps talking. I laugh at the irony. A few of the other girls start giggling because they realize how stupid she's being)

Me: "A, do you realize that you have to go the worst, but you're the ONLY one still talking?"

(She realizes now that she won't win, so she becomes defiant and keeps talking just to talk. It has become a power struggle)

Me: "Okay, everyone else can use the restroom except A."

(She is still talking. All the girls use the restroom and return to their seats quietly. A won't sit down, she's just standing)

Me: "A, will you please sit down so we can get started?"

(She won't sit down. I ask her again nicely and again she won't sit down. I demand of her to sit down, she won't)

Me: "A, sit down. Sit."

AB: "I am not your dog! Don't tell me to sit!"

(I walk over to her seat and tell her to go to the hall and wait for me. She sits very quickly. I tell her that her time to sit has passed. She goes out in the hall)

Me, very calmly: "Why? I just want to know why you thought the last 10 minutes was a good idea."

AB: "I hate this class."

Me: "Why?"

AB: "YOU! YOU! You always pick on us!"

Me: "I pick on you? I pick on you because I want you to be able to follow a simple direction? If you keep acting like this, you'll be at McDonald's. But if you get to McDonald's and your boss says, 'Hey, A, go flip those burgers,' and you don't do it, you won't be at McDonald's anymore, you'll be on the street."

AB: "I won't be at McDonald's, I'm gonna be a lawyer."

(I chuckled at the prospect of that)

AB: "YOU ARE A RACIST! If B (a white girl) came out here and said she wants to be a lawyer, you would say that it's a fantastic idea, but you just laugh whenever a black girl says it because you're racist!"

Me: "How black is C? Is she as black as you?"

AB: "Yeah."

Me: "Yeah, she is. She wants to go to law school and I think it's a wonderful idea, we've even stayed after school and looked at law school pamphlets together. What about L?"

AB: "She's not black, she's mixed, she doesn't count."

Me: "Wait a second. I'm racist because you don't follow directions, yet you're the one who won't count another black girl because her dad is half-hispanic? Who's racist now?"

Anyway, the conversation digressed until it could go no further. Honestly, it hurt to hear that from her. I've made a very concerted effort to treat all my students equally and I really don't see color anymore. My favorite students are B, C and J, are all black, but A doesn't care because I'm a racist.

Me: "Is AD black?"

AB: "Yeah."

Me: "Well, by your definition of skin color, she's actually blacker than you are. So why isn't she out here in trouble? If I hate black students so much, why isn't every black girl out here just like you? Did you ever think that it's your attitude and not your skin color that's getting you into trouble?"

(She doesn't respond)

Our hallways are a 1950s-style checkerboard pattern with alternating brown and tan squares. The students are required to stand in one block ("rock your block") and not talk in the hallway.

Me: "Well, we're gonna go see Mr. Jones, our BLACK administrator, and see if he treats you any differently...."

(And then the kicker that totally pissed her off)

Me: "...and you need to rock your block, so put BOTH feet inside that brown block. Oh, excuse me, I forgot that I'm a racist. Will you PLEASE put both feet in that block right there that's a little darker shade than the one next to it?"

Yeah, a little immature, but oh so gratifying...except that I'm a racist.