Oy vey

We have a bunch of teachers off campus this week, at a training in San Francisco (which was booked and paid for before the school district froze all spending...because our stupid state legislature and governator can't pass a freakin' budget and all need to quit their day jobs and find someone else to bug...).

Anyway, lots of subs means lots of goosiness in the kids. We had one girl-fight. Nelly (names changed and all that) called Dolly a name, and Dolly smacked her. Or that's what I hear from the kids, anyway. I take middle school gossip with a chunk of salt.

And my normally smart children in 5th period were rendered stoopid. I gave each group a famous African-American figure to make a collage about. I gave them a picture of their subject, and a short bio. I told them to look for key words, and gave them a great example: "If your group has George Washington Carver, he had something to do with how peanuts are harvested. I would accept a picture of peanuts or peanut butter."

I gave the directions orally. I had them written on the white board. I pointed out each group's supplies, and how they each had a different person.

I admit, I didn't supervise as much as I normally would. I was cleaning up a mess in another part of the room. But imagine my surprise when all of the collages came back with Barack Obama all over them!

"Who was your assigned person?" I asked group after group.

"Obama..." they replied, as if I was the biggest dumbass to walk the schoolyard in the last six months.

"No one...was...assigned...Obama..." I muttered weakly, trying to keep my head from crashing against my desk.

Then Davey approached my desk. Davey is a nice enough kid, but it's generally accepted among his peers and teachers alike that he's not quite all there. He is the most frustrating child EVER, simply because he has a complete inability to listen.

Davey approached me with a handful of pictures he'd torn from the magazines at his table (he didn't even bother with scissors).

"Are these okay, Miss C.?"

"Well...who's the person you were assigned?"

"Obama."

"Nooooo, Davey, you were NOT assigned Obama. Who was on the paper I gave you?"

Blank look.

"Table Two! Come over here!"

Turns out they had Mae Carol Jemison, the first African American woman in space. Davey, meanwhile, had a stack of every African American face he could find in the magazines. Models, politicians, actors, you name it. If the person was African American, he had torn them out of the magazine for his group's collage.

Somehow, I got everyone to clean up, and gave a little "what we have here is a failure to communicate...or rather, LISTEN" rant before marching them to lunch.

Sixth period found me staring, open-mouthed, as the boys in class (this is my most immature class) found every somewhat racy picture they could and laughed like Beavis and Butthead over it. Much laughter was had over a picture of a cat crossing its legs in a cat litter add.

Immaturity?

You have no idea.

And yet, I love my job!