Get a Life

Yesterday, sixty students turned in their "Who Am I" essays. And, of course, today, repeatedly, I heard, "Mrs. Kies, are we going to get our papers back today?"

"Yeah, right," I said to the sixth hour class. "I've got a life, you know."

"You do?" Sam asked.

"Yes, I do. Last night I went to yoga, then my book club meeting and . . ."

The whole class began to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"I suppose you sat around and talked about what you read."

"Yeah, it was fun."

The laughter increased in volume.

"You call that a life?" I heard from the back.

It just might take me awhile to get those papers corrected.

Gas Mask

Every so often I get a class after lunch that is goofy and full of---air. Smelly air. Flatulence. Gas. OK---farts.

Being juniors, one would think they could handle themselves in a mature manner and do what most adults do: breath shallow until the odor subsides and, in the mean time, SHUT UP ABOUT IT.

But, no. This goofy bunch kept it up, no matter how hard I tried to change the subject:

"Do you smell that?"

"OMG. Who did it?"

"It wasn't me."

"Yeah, right."

"It came from over there. I know it did."

"OK, let's get busy on the quiz," I interject.

"Jeez, that's disgusting," Maria says, tucking her nose inside her sweatshirt.

"No kidding. Somebody let another one. It can't be the same one."

"It was you, wasn't it Jerry?"

"No, really it wasn't. I like to claim these kind of things, and it wasn't mine."

"All right, you guys. That's enough. Get busy and finish your quiz and turn it in, OK?"

They hand their quizzes in and everyone navigates around the smell as they come to the front of the room.

"I just went by it. Stay away from Monty. He did it, didn't you?"

Monty grins.

I stay in the front of the room where it's safe. And here I was worried about the spread of H1N1.

Creative---But Not Writing

I took my creative writing class to the computer lab last week. Getting them to produce on the spot can be a chore, for they, like many writers, procrastinate by checking email and surfing the Net instead of writing.

Creativity usually doesn't bubble to the surface like crude oil, I tell them. It's work, and you've got to dig. So, get busy and write!

Most of them were trying to write. I was correcting papers at a table where I could casually see the computer screen of one of the worst procrastinators my class and the world has ever witnessed.

Sure enough. He had the computer camera on, goofing around. When I looked up and saw him doing this, I, like a good teacher, chastised him, as I have to do on a regular basis.

"Avi---get to work and quit fooling around."

He laughed at me, saying, "Oh, that was soooo perfect."

I was getting pissed.

I got up to tower over him and assert my authority, and he replayed the video he had been recording and turned the sound up.

"Just watch," he said.

There he was with me in the background of the picture, and he was narrating: "Well, I'm sitting here doing nothing, having fun recording myself, trying to be creative, but any minute now Mrs. Kies is going to look up and yell at me."

It was at that moment, as if on cue, that I looked up and yelled at him.

The class got little writing done that day. Several helped Avi slow my voice down and then speed it up so I sounded like I was on crack.

Creativity abounded that day, but not much writing.