Keep Smiling Through....

Sometimes teaching feels like a right old slog - thank God for the funny things that make us laugh.

Years ago a colleague related the tale of teaching a class what we would now call Y10 students. They were not the brightest buttons at the best of times, so getting through Romeo and Juliet was a bit of a mission. Anyway, she had asked the class to choose some imagery from the play to illustrate as a way of engaging them with the power and beauty of the bard's language.

One student was diligently drawing a very lovely picture of two horses lying on the floor. My colleague was puzzled, but was willing to go with it - after all, kids sometimes respond very creatively. Why, she enquired the horses? Were they perhaps a subtle metaphor?

No, replied the girl, looking at my colleague as if she were completely stupid. They're the horses. You know - the dead ones. 

Ummmm - I don't remember any dead horses... says my colleague.

Yeah - that Mercution says it: "A plague on both your horses."

Several years ago, I was reading The Machine Gunners with a class of very bright Year 7s. We came to a part in the story when one of the character's mothers is having an elicit affair with an officer who has been billeted in their home. She makes an appearance in her negligee and has clearly been spending time with this chap in a bedroom. 

Most kids don't get it at that age and we glide on seamlessly, unaware of the shennanigans suggested in the book.

What's a negligee? asks a bright, earnest boy.

Ummm. It's a sort of dressing gown. Says I.

So...she's not dressed properly?

Ummm. 

So what have they been doing in there? He asks all wide-eyed.

Another, much more savvy boy pipes up - what do you THINK they've been doing?

Quickly, I chipped in - Oh, well...probably just eating cake.

For the next four years "eating cake" became their euphemism for sex. 

Today, a colleague came in with a similarly great story. A class had been asked to come up with a mnemonic to remember the points of the compass - you know, Never Eat Shredded Wheat or some such.

My colleague was called to deal with this child who had written something quite outrageous.  

Naturally, the riot act was read and they child reduced to a sobbing mass. Asked to explain himself, they child managed to stutter that the word he had written was Never Ever Stop WORKING and not an exhortation to ceaselessly practice self love. His handwriting skills are not great but this time they had really let him down...

See? Handwriting is important!