Some of the Best* Things my Students** have Done or Said so Far During this Year: The First Installment in an Ongoing Compendium

*And by "Best" I mean "Most Amusing"

**All names changed to protect privacy, natch.

--I introduced  the concept of "compound words"  (remember? butter+fly=butterfly, rain+bow=rainbow, etc) to some of my extremely precocious third-graders, via a game of "Compound Word Dominoes," during which I explained that "compound" is not just a "describer word" (the word we use for adjectives") and a "P.P.T. word (people, places, and thing word, i.e. noun), but also an "action word" (the term we use for verbs) that means "adds to/adds together" or "makes stronger." We then went around in a circle and made up sentences using "compound" in one of those three ways. A week after this lesson, during a recess break, one of my third-graders marched up to me, extremely affronted, towing hs offending friend behind him by the hand, and announced by way of introduction, "Tomer (the friend)  says he doesn't think "Dover Anglit" (English-Speakers) class is hard, even though we read chapter books (emphasis his) and everything!" I gamely tried to mediate this conflict, agreeing that English Speakers class is, indeed, very challenging, but that "regular" English classes are also very demanding, and that placement in one or the other is not an indication of general superiority. Satisfied, my third-grader released the now chastened Tomer, but lingered momentarily to tell me, "Sometimes Tomer really, really compounds my being mad at him."

 ---As we waited for the rest of his classmates to arrive in the school library, one of my second-graders leaned across the table convivially to tell me: Becky, you know what I really like about you?"
Me: No, what?
3rd-grader: You don't shower. I really like that.
Me: (horrified pause) Roi, I shower every morning! (internally: Do I have some sort of body odor problem I'm not aware of? Oh god! I'm the weird stinky teacher! Noo!)
3rd-grader: No, no, I mean you don't shower at us! Like Ravital (one of his other teachers) does!
Me: (slightly less horrified pause) Roi, do you mean that I don't *shout* at you guys?
3rd-grader: Oh.  Maybe. Yes. I get those two confused sometimes.

---I have an independent tutorial with one of my third-graders, Gabbi, who is a native English speaker from South Africa. .This self-described "history fan" has a sunny demeanor, ever-present gap-toothed smile, preference for ostentatiously large hair bows, and deep affection for Hannah Montana, all of which belies her intense interest in the Shoah. Per her request, we spent the bulk of last year learning more about the Holocaust, diligently putting new vocabulary words to use in our discussions of genocide, and using (the very small sub-genre of) child-appropriate stories on the subject as practice texts for independent reading and the like. For example, we read about Ann Frank and her diary, and learned about the Jewish resistance movement. Heady stuff for a third-grader whose other hobbies include tap-dancing and sticker-collecting.

This year, Gabbi sat down with me for our first one-on-one lesson together, and produced a thick children's book, dense with illustrations and photos . Opening the book to a two-page color diagram of a colossal cruise liner, she announced that this year she, "wanted to do English projects about all of this!" The title of her book?The Titanic Disaster.

Really.

---We are doing a theatrical adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are in one of my classes, a project the kids are embracing with great industry and enthusiasm. After completing the script together (which entailed, for clarity's sake, giving individual names to all of the "Wild Things," who the kids dubbed "Goathead," "Snowy," Stinkyteeth, and (for some reason), "Barney.") the time came to divide the parts. In spite of the fact that I had carefully edited the script to make sure *every* part had the exact same number of lines, everyone (EVERYONE) wanted to be Max, and this casting conflict  almost dissolved the class into complete anarchy. After several entreaties for order, I finally bellowed, "IF EVERYONE DOESN'T QUIET DOWN RIGHT NOW, NOBODY WILL GET TO BE MAX!" This outburst had the desired effect, but in its silent aftermath, one of the boys in the class, Tal, meekly raised his hand and quietly pointed out with a worried look on his face, "Becky, the play isn't really going to make much sense if Max isn't in it."

---We are doing a Greek Mythology unit in several of my 6th grade classes, and one of the early projects called for each student to imagine themselves as a demi-god, choose a God parent, then describe their special abilities, their heroic quests(s), and their weakness. The day this assignment was due, we went around the table and shared our work. The first boy to reveal his demi-god alter ego excitedly explained his parentage (as a son of Zeus), then proudly explained that one of his half-blood talents was, "Super Farts." Before he could explain the martial power/destructive capabilities of these farts, no less than three of my other male students screwed up their faces in dissapointment and interrupted to say that power-farting was one of *their* demi-god abilities. A brief argument ensued in which each boy accused the others of copying their idea for godly super farts.Meanwhile, one of the girls in the class locked eyes with me and gave me a classic Jim-Halpert-from-"The Office" combination sigh n' shoulder shrug.

---During a read-aloud session with our current book, Matilda, I asked my students to make "illustrations" (new vocab word) of their favorite moments from the book thus far. Almost everyone in the class chose to draw one of the episodes in the book involving Matilda's frightening giant of a school headmistress, Miss Trunchbull. But only one of my kids, Ido, decorated his Trunchbull portrait with speech bubbles coming from her mouth that said, "I hate all children,""I am ugly and fat,"  "I eat childrens' ears," (a detail not mentioned in the book, but certainly within the realm of possibility) and the funniest/saddest, as it seemed to typify human evil for my student "I am from Iran!"

One of Ido's buddies, meanwhile, had drawn Trunchbull with enormous, pendulous breasts, each topped with a graphite-colored nipple *and* a long. . .. um. . . phallus. . . that he had carefully colored with a yellow highlighter. To prevent any ambiguity, he drew an arrow toward her crotch and wrote, "Trunchbull has the thing of a man!" This was, obviously, a big hit with his classmates.

Another student in the same class, who is a huge sci-fi fan, drew a neon-saturated picture of an alien, and when I asked which part of the (completely space alien free) book he chose to illustrate, explained that he had drawn Miss Trunchbull, based on his hunch that someone so awful and mean could not truly be human, and so was almost definitely a visiting alien. He denied  that the development of this literary theory had anything to do with his love for drawing aliens.

--Upon listening to me ask the non-English-speaking school janitor to unlock one of the classrooms, in what, I flattered myself, was pretty darn fluent Hebrew, my 4th-grader Talia laid her hand on my arm in a very kind, affectionate, and only slightly condescending fashion and told me, "Becky, maybe you should ask one of *us* to ask him for you."

--A request from one of my fourth-grade girls, who is a (very rare--in our school) only child: "Becky, will you be my big sister?" I answer in the affirmative, telling her I'd be delighted. Her response: "Good! But this doesn't mean you can come live in my house, we don't have room."

--During a pre-class discussion of the various maritual statuses of everyone's parents, and a partial inventory of everyone's half and step-siblings, one of my students turned to me and asked, Becky, are you divorced?"
Me: No.
Another student: She's not even married yet!
First student:  (after carefully considering this information) Well, are your mom and dad divorced?
Other student again: (butting in before I can answer and in the process revealing a somewhat limited understanding of  history and possibly demonstrating an erroneous belief in some type of statute of limitations on parental divorces?) Maor, when Becky was our age, divorces didn't even EXIST. 


--One of my 2nd-graders, upon learning that I am a vegetarian: Well, I don't eat meat from
animals I *like.*
 Me: What animals are those?
Second-grader: (Without pause): Horses, cats, puppies, parrots, monkeys, lemurs, and hamsters, and bunnies, and kangaroos, and turtles, and "yaelim" (Israeli mountain goats) and baby animals. Except for baby snakes. (Small pause to think) Oh, and also lions, and zebras. And giraffes.
Me: (Hastily, knowing this list could go on for a very long time)So I guess you don't like chickens, or cows, then, huh?
Second-grader: (With the greatest amount of condescension a second-grader can muster) Of. COURSE. Not.
{End of Discussion}