Conversations from the classroom...

On age with my Year 11s (thats fifth form in old school)

Me "so its your birthday soon? when were you born? like 1988 or something"
Student(s) "oor no way sir, doubt it, we born in like 1993"
Me *exclaiming* "WHAT? you never even knew the 80s???!!!!!"
Me *unable to believe that I was finally teaching people who were born in the 90s* "So you didn't know the smurfs or muppets or snorks or, or, or (I was searching for fragglerock and in doing so tailed off the sentence in disbelief)..."
Students *to whom the muppets did not ellicit a response* "Yeah we know the smurfs, whats a snork?"

I couldn't believe it, I clearly remember a lot of 1993 and some of them weren't even born. I managed to appear none to concerned, they certainly weren't given that two of the other maths teachers had taught their parents, so I am still young enough to not be considered old. My year nines might not think so, I didn't ask them since as most of us more than double their age these days!



Another lesson with my year 11s and this time on the topic of ratio, (e.g. 4:5)

student "hey sir, whats that dot dot thing called?"
me "ummm, thats called a colon" *in my head - hehehe*
student "oh yeah like in english"
me "thats right, theres the semi colon too"
another student *quietly* "it also a" and then fades out as if unsure whether its alright to say
me "yes, it's also part of the human body" (did I mention this was an assessed lesson with another teacher grading me)
yet another student *pipes up* "yeah and you can have, like, a colonoscopy"
me "yeah, thats right too"
original student "yeah, thats the one where they stick their fingers up your bum ay?"
me *amongst general light hearted murmuring about colons, colonoscopies, fingers and bums* "Something like that, BUT maybe you ask your science teacher about that and your english teacher about the english ones and we'll talk about the maths ones and ratio" *whew, well rounded off and back onto some maths despite the attraction of furthering the conversation, this, after all being an assessed lesson...



and heres one with my year 12s

me "rant about behaviour, silliness, achievement, blah blah blah, move seats for next lesson, blah blah blah"
student *muttered* "wanker"
three possibilities are there presented to me:

1 "and you don't???"
2 "yeah, well you'd know more about that than me 'student' those calluses I see on your hands?"

after some (internal) debate I went for option three: red slip, remove from class and detention.

yeah, take that, now whos a wanker huh?

And just so theres some photos, heres the scene of said conversations: my classroom





if you zoom in on the big paper to the left, you an actually see someone has actually written "I heart maths" (and no, it wasn't me!!!)