Quote of the Day (core)

"Are you in core?" - A question blurted out from one intermediate student to her peer. Irritated that her classmate didn't understand what she was asking, she persisted, "RIGHT THERE! On your shirt, it says core!" I looked up to see what the commotion was and saw that the student was wearing his shirt for the school's choir program. (12/15/11)

Quote of the Day (inaccuracy)

"I don't think I learned this." - An intermediate student's wrong way to ask for help on a problem on the end of the semester exam. She's right. She never learned it, but I'm pretty sure I taught it. (12/14/11)

Quote of the Day (S)

"Mister, I thought it was spelled Tuesday, with the S in the middle." - A confused intermediate student who mistook the listing of the number of days left for the day of the week. I had written 'Two days'. (12/13/11)

Quote of the Day (wrong)

"Does that mean it's not right?" - Question from a student who worked through a fairly difficult problem doing all of the steps correctly only to find out he had copied down the question wrong. (12/12/11)

Quote of the Day (synonym)

"Hey strange man, I hardly see you around on campus anymore." - A coworker's greeting to me after not seeing each other at work for almost the entire semester. Unless she really was trying to drop the hint that I'm odd, I'm pretty sure she meant 'stranger'. (12/9/11)

Quote of the Day (misreading)

"Mister, what does 'me noose' mean?" - Completely baffling question coming from TWO different intermediate students today. When I looked at where they were pointing, I saw the source of confusion, the word "minus". (To be fair, I did give them a strict time limit in translating word problems into math symbols and numbers that caused them to read quickly) (12/7/11)

Quote of the Day (compound)

"Upto a week" - Painfully bad error I spotted on a coworker's document. How did I know it wasn't just a typo? Two lines down was written, "Upto one week after quiz is returned." (12/6/11)

Quote of the Day (pedagogy)

"I teach using hormones." - A teacher in today's workshop discussing how she paired up a needy male student to get help from an overzealous female student (12/5/11)

Quote of the Day (sanitary)

"Ew. Other kids' butts have been on there." - A 6 year old kid's admonition after her sibling put his face on a chair in McDonald's (12/3/11)

Quote of the Day (donkey)

"We need one regular education teacher to stay till the end of this meeting. DANIEL! You always volunteer, so I know you enjoy staying after school for these meetings." - Infuriating assumption from a coworker during a meeting. Listen, I volunteered in the past because your (lack of) preparation for these kind of meetings was a lawsuit waiting to happen © (12/1/11)

Quote of the Day (mix 2)

"I'm from the country and the ghetto, I'm countr-etto." - Another amalgamation from the same intermediate student that came up with "Samo-ngan" the other day. (11/28/11)

Quote of the Day (mix 1)

"Is he Samo-ngan?" - A student asking his peer about the nationality of their classmate. When he sensed my confusion he added, "That's when they're Samoan AND Tongan mixed." (11/29/11)

Quote of the Day (gains)

"It doesn't look like you gained too much weight Mister." - An intermediate student's observation after we talked about how our Thanksgiving weekend went. (11/28/11)

Quote of the Day

"Can I trade you my notebook for a bento?" - Freudian slip from a student seeking to give me collateral to borrow a pencil. (11/23/11)

Quote of the Day (eyes)

"For real Mister? You can't roll your eyes?" - A student's reaction after I jokingly told him that I can't roll my eyes because they're too small. Can you guess what my response was to his question? (11/21/11)

Quote of the Day (car)

"Do you have a yellow camaro?" - A silly question from the same intermediate student that thinks I look like Max from Hawaii 5-0. (11/21/11)

Quote of the Day (contagion)

"Stop breathing!" - A friend's playfully unsympathetic solution to prevent me from spreading germs after another one of my coughing fits. (11/19/11)

Quote of the Day (difficulty)

"Mister, is Algebra II harder than Algebra I?" - Question from a slightly confused student. The sad part is that the student who asked this is in my Algebra II class. (11/18/11)

Quote of the Day (career)

"I'm glad that you didn't do that." - A student's compliment after I had just explained that I was actually a Botany major (with a pre-med emphasis) before deciding to become a math teacher. (11/17/11)

Quote of the Day (surprise)

"WHAT?! Mister?! How come you gave me a zero?" - Response from an intermediate student, who refused to do any work solely because one of her peers took her seat after she came into class late. Her friend had caught a glimpse of my grade sheet for today and laughingly blurted out the score to her. (11/15/11)