Departments: In the Light Lane
President George

As I began teaching a song about George Washington to my kindergarten class, I decided to go for a teachable moment.

First, I asked if anyone knew whose picture was on the dollar bill I was holding. A hand went up, and a young boy confidently answered, "It's George Washington, D.C."

That was funny only to me, as I noticed the other eager learners sitting in their chairs ready for more. I then asked who George Washington was, and several knew he was the first president.

With the recent inauguration having just taken place, I jumped on the "teachable moment" and asked if anyone knew the name of our current president.

I was pleased to see numerous hands go up and then hear many respond with the name "George Bush." I decided to see how far I could go with this and asked if anyone knew who was president before George Bush.

One hand went up, the same little guy who knew of George Washington, D.C. He proudly stated that the previous president was "George Clinton."

Michael Merry
Cincinnati, Ohio

I was teaching my advanced algebra and trig class how to maximize a rectangular area, trying to use real world examples. We have a lot of families in the area who breed dogs. So I told my students that they were raising dogs and want to keep the male dogs out of the female dogs' pens, and to do that we'll need an additional length of fence to complete the area.

I reminded them that the piece of the fence that separates the two pens must be the same length as the sides that it is parallel with--because if it wasn't, then they'd be able to answer that question that everyone is asking.

They looked at me with puzzled and confused looks. After a pause, I said, "You know, the question that everyone is asking: Who let the dogs out?" They all groaned, but I think it got the point across.

John Chester
Jacksonville, North Carolina

I was teaching a genetics concept in a biology class a few years ago. I told the students that capital letters are used to represent dominant alleles and lowercase letters represent recessive alleles (for example, T = tall and t = short). One of my tenth grade students raised her hand and said, "Miss Forand, do you mean that we have little letters floating around in our bodies?" It was very hard to keep a straight face while the other 27 students roared with laughter.

Judy Forand
Northampton, Pennsylvania

I was teaching an enriched algebra II math class (10th and 11th grades). As I told them what page to open to in the textbook, I wrote it on the chalkboard. Of course, someone yelled out, "What page?" This student's friend hit him on the arm, pointed to the chalkboard, and yelled out, "It's written right there! What are you, illegitimate or something?"

Suzanne Krieger
Cresskill, New Jersey

Whenever possible, I try to prepare my classes for a substitute teacher by impressing upon them how overworked and underpaid our few substitutes are.

Students always want to know who the substitute will be, so one day I told them, "I never know who it will be, but I do expect you to be on your best behavior no matter who it is." To this, one student named Jason thoughtfully and immediately responded, "I sure hope that Pamela Anderson is on the list!"

Kristi Bancroft Boucher
West Paris, Maine

I'd been teaching my first grade class the names of different shapes, such as hexagon, rhombus, and trapezoid. I asked the students if they knew the name of the shape that I was holding in front of them. When I held up a trapezoid-shaped block, one little boy named George raised his hand. When I called on him, he excitedly shouted, "It's a freakazoid!"

Lisa Guerrera
Vallejo, California

For National School Nurses' Day, one of my third grade classes gave me a "thank you" book with messages and drawings from each student. A seriously ADHD student wrote, "Thank you for being my nurse and thank you for giving me my meds. Michael Y." At the end of the book was another message: "Thank you for everything and thank you for giving meds to Michael Y. Your friend, Brendon."

When you have a caseload of 2,000 students, it's nice to know you affect them all, even without direct contact.

Anita Fullbright, RN, MSN, FNP
Eureka, California

As a speech/language pathologist, I work on narrative skills by talking about weekend activities.

One Monday morning, a student happily shared an account of his weekend. He said that he had company on Saturday night and pizza was delivered to his house "right at the croak of midnight." Another student quickly corrected him by stating, "It's not the croak of midnight. It's the crock of dawn!"

Jo Anne Brown
Hamilton, Massachusetts

In our high school learning center, we get lots of laughs. One day, one of our ed techs was praising a student for his improvement. She said, "Mike, you're just like fine wine. You get better over time." Joe, who never likes to be outdone, added, "Well, if he's like fine wine, then I must be like tequila: A little bitter at first, but then I make you happy."

Betsey Clark
Lebanon, Maine

The freshman students in my World Civilizations I class were selecting topics for reports on ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. A rather sheepish-looking student in the back row let all the other students choose their topics first, and then approached me seeking assistance in making his selection. "I really do not have much experience in doing research, so I'm looking for a topic that I can find information about easily."

Sensing his trepidation, I suggested that he focus on an important individual, since our library has readily accessible holdings on many notable figures in history, and that these would make a nice starting point for his research. I gave him the topics list to scan over and told him to look for a famous person he had heard of. After carefully glancing over the list, he said "I want to do a report on this women named Stone." This puzzled me , since I could remember no such person on my list of suggested topics. However, he quickly clarified his choice, saying "I want to do my project on Rosetta Stone."

Mark Kuhl
Lake Forest, Illinois

I am a teacher's assistant for first grade. The teacher I work with and I try teaching 6 year olds responsibility. One of their responsibilities in our classroom is keeping up with their crayons and pencil, and if they lose one to let us know. One day just recently, I had a little boy come to me and said "Mrs. Evans, I ain't got no black". I responded by saying "You mean, I do not have a black". Then he spoke in return and said "Well, I ain't got no black either, Mrs. Evans".

Bonnie Evans, TA
Newton, North Carolina

Our school has been participating in the Dear Abby project to send valentines to vets for about 5 years now. All our K-5th graders make their own valentines to send to a vet in a veterans' hospital and nursing home near Chicago. One of the best valentines came recently from a second grader who wrote, "Happy Valentine's Day, Vet. And thank you for taking care of my dog when he was sick. He's better now."

Laura Font
Elmhurst, Illinois

My colleague had borrowed the Wide Range Achievement Test from me so that she could give her new student additional testing. When I met her in the hallway later that morning, she announced that she was finished with the testing materials. As her students overheard her say,"Mrs. K. when would you like your WRAT (rat) back?", there was a gasp from her students and many questions of why she was giving me such an animal, and why did I have such a ghastly animal as a pet in the first place?"

Carol Kinsey
Virginia Beach, Virginia

I am an elementary special education teacher. I like to take short monthly field trips with my students. These trips provide an opportunity to practice social skills as well as an experience base from which to launch language arts activities. Last month I was trying to contact the man who manages a nearby stable for horses and other critters. When I called there a sweet young voice answered and told me the man wasn't there. I asked the girl, "When would be a good time to call him so I could talk to him about a visit?" She replied, "Well, I think you should call when he is here." Right.

Cathy Savage
Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

My kindergarten class had as a guest reader a state policeman and his dog that was trained in the Czech Republic. I used this as an opportunity to teach some basic map skills.

I started by locating the United States, the Czech Re-public, and the Atlantic Ocean. The kindergartners appeared attentive and interested. One child then raised his hand and asked, "Now can you show us where the tooth fairy lives?'

Susanna Walz
Easthampton, Massachusetts

When I was a new teacher I taught a unit on the Civil War. I told my class about the Union Army, how the Southern states had seceded from the Union, how Lincoln fought the war to preserve the Union, Union this and Union that.

I was feeling pretty smug because I thought I'd done a good job of explaining this tragic chapter of our history. Then Kelley raised her hand and asked me if that union was the same union that carpenters belonged to.

Warren Valente
Plymouth, Massachusetts

Me--"How did you know my name?" He--"You was my English teacher."

Elizabeth Trowbridge
Bangor, Maine

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