The other day at school started like any other. It comes time for me to let my students into my class in the morning, and most of my boys come in singing the song for the free credit report commercials. "F to the R to the E-E-C-R-E-D-I-T dot com baby!" It never ceases to amaze me that kids are so willing to memorize stupid jingles like this, but when I ask them to study and memorize our vocabulary words for the week they don't remember a single thing!
This morning everyone was buzzing about the results of the election. In honor of our election yesterday, we had our own middle school polling where the kids voted on the next president with all the same candidates as the national one, but we decided to add a few of our own school amendments. We found a way to make the wording so complex and completely unable to understand so the kids would feel what it really is like to be voting for some of those amendments out there. Some of our amendments were (in understandable terms) whether or not i-Pods should be allowed at school, not ever having to do homework but only if all your trash is dumped into the oceans, trading class rewards for having to do an extra math assignment, and whether or not after school detention should be extended an extra 15 minutes. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the looks on students' faces when they tried to understand what they were voting for.
With me working in the middle of nowhere in an extremely conservative community, it was no wonder the voting outcome for our school was for Senator McCain. When my kids walked in this morning, there were some severely somber faces. I had a kid come up to me this morning and say, "Mrs. Gordon, if Obama is our new president, does that make us an 'Obama-nation?'" I couldn't believe what I heard. I cracked up laughing so hard. Only in hickville would I hear a remark like that. These kids crack me up.
It's not just these sorts of things that I find amusing, but also the kind of political remarks you can only imagine they hear a parent say at home. I especially like comments like, "I don't like Bush because he is the one who raised our gas prices." I don't have enough time in my day outside of my normal lessons to explain how our president doesn't directly dictate the price of oil. There are so many other variables related to that, I wouldn't know where to begin. I teach English and Reading.
Maybe I should start taking down some of the funny things I hear my students say. I could write a bestseller some day...
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