Before I move on...

When I appeared on Jeopardy, my interview with Alex Trebek was about how places I'd worked at (summer jobs in retail and food service) kept closing. Unfortunately, this has extended into my teaching career. I've now worked in two districts where my position has been eliminated after two years of working there. Next week starts my fifth year of teaching in my third district.

I have two more adventures in teaching stories from kids in district #2. I am sure they will be followed by adventures from district #3.

Story #1:

A boy is receiving a cello lesson. I was on my prep and using the computer in the music room. I'd been reading an email from the school regarding a upcoming schedule change that was particularly inconvenient for the music classes. I called the strings teacher over to tell him about it, remarking that it was "baloney," since there was a kid in the room and I couldn't say "bullshit."

"You want to know what's baloney?" remarked the boy with the cello. "You should have seen my lunch!"

Add the fact that this kid has severe emotional disabilities and is rarely in a joking mood, and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.


Story #2:

Sixth grade choir. They were singing a version of the popular Spanish folk song "De Colores." Every kid in the school has to take Spanish, so I was trying to see which words they could recognize in the phrase "y por eso los grandes amores de muchos colores me gustan a mi." They were stuck on "amores."

A lot of people in this district are of Italian descent (this is Jersey, after all) so I asked "Have you guys heard the song 'That's Amore?' It's pretty much the same..."

A lightbulb went on over a girl's head. She gasped.

"Amores means PIZZA!"



So that's all I got for now. And I'd like to say that since my new job is 7th-12th grade, the stories won't be like this, but we all know that's not true...they'll probably just be less adorable.