Oh no!!!!! It's BMM!

I've recently been told, through the grapevine, that my 8th grade students think I'm a hard grader. This is coming from my STUDENT MENTORS who are turning in 5-sentence reflections rife with spelling and grammar errors. I told them that their new goal is to get rid of their bare-minimum mindset, and that has become my new mantra in their classes.

Well, it's late, and I've been grading for a few hours now while my pile doesn't seem to be getting much smaller. That's making me feel like I just might go crazy. So when I graded one students' barely legible 5-sentence reflection, I wrote the following letter to him:

Dear ______,

Oh no! I think you need to see a doctor quick because you seem to be suffering from BMM!! You know, "Bare-Minimum Mindset!" You'd better act fast so you can get rid of those nasty symptoms like not enough detail, or the ultimate side effect of BMG - "Bare-Minimum Grades!" AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

-Mrs. K


I thought telling him to "step it up" in a playful way might take the edge off, but there is also a good chance that he'll just think I'm the weirdest teacher ever. Any guesses on what his reaction will be to this random teacher note? lol

cat maniacs!!!!

Okay, so I truly love my little Clementine and Tang, but seriously??? This is truly insane! Incredibly interesting and worth the watch, but nevertheless totally insane! To all of my true friends out there, if I EVER start to even entertain the idea of creating a catwalk in my house, please put me in the hospital for a CAT scan! (haha, punny, eh?) And I don't mean any offense to the people who did this. I mean, I guess in all honesty it's kind of cool.... but really, it's just totally insane! I guess Clem and Tang will just have to settle for a simple cat post/bed and some toys.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/article/Amazing-House-for-Cats131&origin=ARS_BLOG_PETVIDS_cathouse_CTG

P.S. I just noticed how ironic it is that they have a huge tiger hide hanging on their wall in the hallway with the zigzag catwalk. Seems that they would be against such a thing. I'm sure it's not real, but still...

Maxi Pads... Yes, Maxi Pads is the title of my post!

My 7th grade students are currently working on "Curiosity Speeches." Based on what I learned at the Literacy Institute this past summer, I wanted to reinvigorate students' curiosities in life. So I'm assigning a speech where they have to ask 5 curiosity questions and they get to research it and give an informational speech about it. My plan is to also later work it into a multigenre presentation to teach visual aids. But I digress...

The other day we were in the computer lab so the students could look up the answers to their curiosities and decide which one to pursue. One boy was looking for the answer to "Why are iPads square?" He was sitting at the computer very close to the desk I was sitting at. I knew he was working on this question, when seemingly out of nowhere, he asks, "Mrs. Kreider, what are Maxi Pads?"

I tried to keep my face composed (and for anyone who knows me well will understand what a struggle that is... I've never been good at hiding my emotions from my face). My brain was quickly rushing to find any kind of reply that would cut off the conversation without having to discuss maxi pads with him.

So to give my brain some more time to process, I asked him, "Where do you see that?" He pointed to some sort of advertisement or something on one of the google sites that pulled up during his research. During that quick little pause of time, the best my brain could come up with was, "Well, it has nothing to do with iPads, so you don't need to worry about it."

THANK GOODNESS the kid dropped it at that point and just went on about his work!! He probably knew what it was all along and just wanted to see me squirm! lol. Ugh, what are we supposed to say to questions like that???? Serves me right for trying to encourage their curiosities! lol


(Story addendum: I thought my story was one of my best examples so far about the awkward things kids say to teachers. That was until I spoke with one of our health teachers today, who told me about his 8th grade lessons on sex ed when a young man asked him about condoms breaking. My heart goes out to the aforementioned teacher, and I am now extremely thankful for questions about maxi pads!)