Departments: In the Light Lane
Playing the Blues

My husband and I are both music teachers. One morning, our four-year-old daughter, Brooke, found a shoe horn in a dresser drawer. She asked what it was and I told her it was a shoe horn.

A few minutes later, I heard her sighing with frustration. She had gone to my closet, taken a shoe, and placed the shoe horn in the shoe. She had her mouth on the shoe horn with cheeks puffed.

She stopped and said in frustration, “Mommy, I can’t get this horn to make a sound!”

Ronna Brown Ebeling
Burke, Virginia

Our sixth grade cafeteria manager was busy trying to solve a money problem. She asked the next sixth grade student in line if he was any good at math. The sixth grader replied, “I don’t know, but my principal must think so because she has me in three math classes!”

Jodie E. Goebel
Punta Gorda, Florida

I often use the overhead machine in math class to explain concepts. Once, I had written several steps in multiple colors—I wanted to make sure everyone in the class had followed the steps. So I asked, “Can anyone tell me how we got from the green to the red here?” while pointing at the key steps. Dylan piped up immediately with, “Ya changed pens, I saw ya!”

Laura Crowley
Shoreline, Washington

One of my Algebra students was on the class computer when it failed to properly reboot due to a disk in one of the drives. The error message instructed the student to “. . .press any key to continue.” His question to me was, “Which key is that?”

Joe Martinez
Long Beach, California

Every other year the opening of school is less hectic for me because of the fact that I loop (keep the same class) up to fourth grade.

On the third day of school this year, while my class was waiting for the walkers bell, one of my students remarked to me and the class, “So Miss Johnson, this thing with having homework the first two nights of school—is that one of the perks of looping that my mom talks about?”

I replied, “Absolutely!”

Shelly L. Johnson
Orono, Maine

Payday arrived as usual and the principal duly delivered the checks to his staff.

In a third grade classroom where I was teaching for the hour—a student noticed our apparent enthusiasm for receiving this “mail.” Innocently he asked the principal what we were excited about.

The principal replied it was our paycheck. With a puzzled expression the student asked, “Do you pay them or do they pay you?”

Terri Howard
Ottawa, Kansas

I was helping one of my fifth grade students with his history on his grandfather so he could find and write the richness of detail which makes for interesting reading. This boy’s grandfather had 12 siblings and he lived on a farm. In order to get the child to write with a more detailed style, I asked “Why were there so many kids in his family?” I was thinking about how large families helped work the farm and were social security for the farmer and his wife as they aged.

The boy looked at me, blushed a deep red, and said "I guess they did IT a lot back then!”

Christopher Walter
Christiansburg, Virginia

An experienced paraprofessional was assisting a student in my classroom. She was seated next to the child’s desk and her heavily varicose-veined leg was exposed below the knee. The pixieish, blond, spectacled second grader whispered seriously, “Mrs. Smith, I like your flower tatoo!” On the following day several staff members adorned their legs with press-on flower tatoos!!!

Susan Guerriero
Farmington, Connecticut

Checking on my kindergartners recognition of numbers, I had them write several of the lower ones. Then I asked if they could think of a really big number and write it. I expected 20 or so, but what I got was several papers with enormous numeral 7’s.

Barbara Pollak
Manalapan, New Jersey

Campaign posters for student council officers lined our school hallway. One poster was decorated with a 5x7 photo of a fifth grade student running for the office of president. A first grader paused and pointed to the photo. “Is he lost?” he asked a teacher nearby.

DiAnna Farmer
Tempe, Arizona

While discussing Hurricane Floyd, I mentioned that Cape Canaveral was shut down, except for a skeleton crew. From the looks on my fourth graders’ faces, I knew they were puzzled.

I asked them what a skeleton crew was. One boy said, “Someone who picks up the bones.” Another said, “People who collect dead bones.” I just laughed and explained the expression.

Dorothy Gipson
Forest Park, Ohio

Definition, Please

My third graders were asked to use their geography-related spelling words in sentences. We had discussed sparsely and densely populated areas in our map studies, so one of the spelling words was “sparsely.” One student’s sentence: “My mom always puts sparsely in her soup.”

Dolores Erak
Aberdeen, Washington

At a retreat for our fifth graders we taught lessons about teamwork, respect, and communication. We asked students to brainstorm ways people can improve their communication. “Use your voice!” one student called out. Another said “Eye contact.” A boy chimed in with, “Body functions!” After a moment of stunned silence, our assistant principal asked, “Don’t you mean body language?”

“Oh, yeah,” the boy replied.

Tera Marker
Wenatchee, Washington

I gave my seventh grade English students a thesaurus to make their writing more interesting and less repetitious. They seemed to enjoy searching for new synonyms and made many changes on the rough drafts in front of them. But one girl’s original draft began, “When I was young,” She changed it to, “When I was underdeveloped.” She had no idea that she had completely changed the meaning of her sentence.

Dianne Dunham
Baldwinsville, New York

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