Mercury

Ah the poisons of mercury...how they can be likened to the endless papers that have poisoned my blog writing. I apologize for the absence, it's amazing what back-to-back-to-back assignments do to the mind. To show you that I am still alive, here's the next best thing to an actual beating heart - a mercury beating heart!

Since my last post I have transitioned to a classroom of sixth graders, which in two short days provided me enough material to make a comedic act. The only (well not really only) bad thing? Those kids are too darn respectful of adults to make crass jokes about my stockings. Because of this I ordered maroon tights. Take that teaching world.

To give you an idea about my life in middle school, here are some tasty tidbits:

1. On walking into the school, one student asks his friend loudly "New kid?" The kid next to him goes "Idiot...new teacher." What a relief...I guess I'm an adult now.

2. My students tried to guess my age. According to their poll, I am somewhere between 18 and 48.

3. Puberty is a real interesting character. Girls are taller than guys, some kids come up to my hip when I'm wearing Danskos, but the best one is trying to figure out who the girly voice singing in the class is coming from.

4. In sixth grade, having a girlfriend means that you can wink at or possibly touch a girl in the hallway. She also gives you her school picture. Anything else? Well that's just too serious.

5. Having a student's older sibling in your old placement makes you instantly cool. As a test of your coolness, you have to be able to spell their name (because that's TOTALLY what your older brother told me about you and it's not like I could get that off an attendance sheet kid).

6. Kids talk. This is no surprise. While my students in ninth grade told me some RANDOM things, sixth graders take random to a whole new level. One kid will not stop talking about food...today's five minute rant was on turkey clubs. Mind you this kid is shorter than short and is lucky to have any ounce of fat on his body (I promise you he is well-fed). Another one of my students tells me about science fiction movies, as if I watch them all the time (I don't). And others just inform me about people they wish would go up in nuclear mushroom clouds (that was talked about with my mentor teacher :/).

7. Animals. We have a palm-sized toad, a lizard, and a family of millipedes living in the class (in cages). Note: I will never touch those things...gross. This also ended up in my placement partner and I taking a baby mouse who was supposed to be toad food back to Ann Arbor with us because the toad is apparently a picky eater. Baby mouse? Well he's in the freezer happily sleeping for the rest of time.


Fun Fact: Liquid mercury is so dense that lead will float on it.