Teachers, what's your, that student definitely isn't going places, moment.

As a getting to know you activity, I asked students, if you could be anyone in history,

who would you be and why? One student's answer, Eleanor Roosevelt, because I've always wanted

to be black. Asked my student, 7th grade life science, why he has Fs in all of his

classes and why he doesn't bother to care about it. He proceeds to tell me with the most confident

smile that he's making it into the NBA. I assigned students to do a group presentation of a story

from mythology at the end of the school year. I told them they

could choose from Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, or any other system they chose. Two students chose

a story from Norse mythology about Thor. They presented the story, which included characters

like Loki, Captain America, Iron Man, etc. completely seriously. I spoke to them at the end of the class,

and they had no clue that Marvel Cinematic Universe was not a part of Norse mythology.

Used to teach English in Japan. Had a four-year-old kid who would run at top speed toward the wall,

throw himself into it, stumble around going, ouch, for a few seconds, then do it all again,

for an hour straight if we would let him. Had a seven-year-old who stripped off down to his

underpants, then skipped around the room singing the Pokemon theme song for the whole class,

finally got him dressed up again just as the lesson ended. He looked up at me and said in complete seriousness,

Sensei, I did a good job. Had a 12-year-old kid who would take off his socks and chew on his

toenails in the middle of my lessons. Kids, man, they're weird. I think due to the behavior

of the four-year-old, there was a modest to good chance all of these were the same kid.

It's not uncommon as a teacher to have students who are a bit behind the curve in certain aspects,

but 99.999% of the time, they are keen on something. They might not understand how to identify

a noun or what theme is, but they somehow know how to make a mean plate of nachos.

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