Welcome to School

For the past several days I've been gleefully reading old blog posts from Hobo Teacher. I wish I actually knew these guys so I could shake their hands. Anyway, I say that I was gleefully reading the old posts because of my own happy situation of not teaching. Whenever I'm not thinking about it very hard, I miss teaching in much the same way as people miss dear childhood friends. You remember the fun times had together and forget the times you were made to eat dog poo on a dare. Ah, memories.

So, as I read through the posts I lamented to myself that I taught for two years (one at a junior high, no less) and had no good stories. What?!? Of course I have good stories. I've just blocked them out. So, for the next little while I will be posting my own teaching stories for your reading enjoyment.

Every teacher has at least one student that is so horrid they swear they will never give one of their own children that name. I have several. Angel. Bronson. Carson. Ivette. Josh. Tinei. Ty. Willard. Zane. Those nine alphbetized names actually only belong to six students, but it's best to avoid the danger of using their last names, too. If I had stayed in teaching too much longer I would have to resort to obscure Biblical names like Smyrna or Festus (Maher-shalal-hash-baz is a personal favorite, but you can use it if you want, Abbie) when I have kids.

Tangent: the other option is to do the Utah thing and combine names of the parents. I saw an announcement for the 50th anniversary of people named, I kid you not, Delyle and LaWana.
They were from Lehi, though, so that explains it.

The students I listed are the ones that most of my stories will be about. Three of them (the ones with interchangable first and last names) were from the high school. The others are from the junior high. As I taught at the high school first, we'll start there. It'a alos the least interesting story.

I taught Family and Consumer Science (translation: Home Ec. What else would the Goddess of Sewing teach?) There are few things in this world I tolerate less than lying. While we were reviewing for a test in sewing, two of the boys told me another teacher had requested their presence, if I could spare them. After telling them this was the only review, I released them to the other teacher. Their fatal mistake was that that night happened to be parent-teacher conference. Why is that important? The teacher that "requested" to have them shares my last name and we were seated next to one another for the evening. He asked if I'd had problems with them. When I said I hadn't, he told me they came to his class saying I had thrown them out. Then they proceeded to spend the rest of the period playing with the large rodent that is his class pet. How silly of them. They ended up being marked truant, had their parents called, and needed to make up two hours of class for lying to us. Darn.

I thought that event had solidified my authority with the class, who declared the consequences "gay", but I was mistaken. Two weeks later the school held makeup testing for the Utah Basic Skills Competency Test (UBSCT--or U biscuit). Announcements about excusing students who were taking the test to be late to class were flying around the PA all week. Two of my football players walked into class half an hour after the last UBSCT student had returned, saying they were taking the test. I didn't buy it, so I looked on my list of all the students needing to take the test. Miraculously, their names weren't on the list. I called the office to report the incident and left it at that for the moment. I had a class to teach. Later that afternoon I received a call of congratulations from one of the secretaries. Perplexed, I asked what I had done. Turns out there was a football game that day and any player marked truant the week of a game is not allowed to play. It was an away game and the coach found out about it after the bus was loaded. He then threw the boys off the bus and they had to call their parents for a ride home. I don't know which team was victorious, but I was the clear winner. One of the boys earnestly apologized and his named is not on my list. The other one, however, has declared his hatred for me many times over and is not at all like his name would suggest. See if you can guess which one I'm talking about.