Ad Lib

The students work in groups, creating fictive dialogues involving characters from The Great Gatsby and The Crucible. I question one group's commitment to the note-taking aspect of the activity.

Me: "Are you guys writing this down?"

Alan Lackey: "No. We're going to ad lib. Because, as we all know: The greatest minds ad lib their greatest inventions. As such, Albert Einstein ad libbed the atomic bomb."

Me, internal: "WTF?"

Hate...Baby

Student, pregnant, to other student: "You know what, I'm not even going to hate you because my baby will come out looking like you."

H.A. Brownies

When my homeroom kids have birthdays, I make them cake. Unless there's a special request for, say, brownies.

Charles: "Mr. Vonn can I have brownies?"

Me: "Sure."

Charles: "Cool. They gotta be soft... we don't want no hard-ass brownies."

Raggedy Chargers

Student [Lawrence]: "Mr. Vonn, is your laptop charger plugged in?"

Me: "Yeah, it's just broken. See, it doesn't light up, but it still chargers." I demonstrate this.

Lawrence: "Man. Even the teachers got the raggedy chargers. That’s how you know a school’s broke."

He makes a point.

Ramen

Student 1: "You like those Roman noodles?"

Student 2: "They're called Ray-man noodles."

Snackage...Ting-Ting

"Yo Mr. Vonn you got any snackage in here because my stomach is seriously going ting-ting."

Tierra Ford is simply in another league when it comes to slang.

The O.R.P. Schraeders

We are reading The Great Gatsby. We pass the relatively boring section where Carraway lists the antiquated, posh-sounding names of people who frequented Gatsby's parties. One such group is referred to as "the O.R.P. Schraeders."

Alan: "O.R.P., does that stand for 'Old Rich People'?

Pier Pressure

Essay Question: How does violence change three characters selected from our reading? You may compare and contrast yourself with two characters if you so choose.

Essay Answer: "For example, Emily Grierson emotionally changes, the narrator from A Party Down at the Square changes through violent pier pressure, and I myself become dynamic emotionally, pier pressure and lots of other things."

Pier pressure is the reason I NEVER go near boardwalks anymore.

Tom-Brady (v.)

Today we had a leadership conference for interested juniors; the event took the entire day. This left me with much smaller class sizes. Fortunately, on days like these, I think the best pedagogical course of action is fairly obvious: playing 'Horse' with the classroom recycle bin and a miniature soccer ball.

The boys (and, to be fair, I as well) immediately set about attempting hopelessly long-distance shots. Upon her turn, Amber Reed went about ten feet away from the recycle bin and threw the ball in forcefully. Jarrod Clausen provided adept color commentary:

"Damn she straight Tom-Bradied that mug right in there!"

Chipotle and Race Relations

"Hey they got a black girl [working] at Chipotle now. She ghetto, too. She gonna get fired."