In the Light Lane
How Times Have Changed

I teach elementary music in a multi-cultural school where many children come from one-parent families.

In a recent third grade music class, the students were learning about the composer Bach. I said to the students, "Well, I know something about Mr. Bach that is not in your textbook. Mr. Bach had TWENTY children."

One third grade boy said with shock, "WOW! He must have had to pay a lot of money in child support." I stifled my desire to laugh, but also realized how much times have changed since Bach's day.

Brenda Payne
Zion, Illinois

In kindergarten, in preparation for Columbus Day, we were discussing Columbus and the three ships--the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.

As we walked down the hallway for dismissal, the children always look at the older students' artwork hanging on the wall.

One day, a student exclaimed, "Look, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria!" We stopped walking and I asked, "Whose ships are they?" One of the students proudly answered, "Ohio's!"

Susan Timlin
Clairton, Pennsylvania

The first week of school I asked my sixth graders to write about themselves. One student wrote, " I'm enjoying all my classes and teachers. I especially love jim."

Mary Kinzer
Birmingham, Missouri

I try to encourage diversity appreciation, but one day it seemed to have gone too far. I asked a group of English-language learners to predict what their lives would be like ten years in the future.

One Asian boy wrote that he would be married. Probing for details, I asked him to describe his future wife.

He wrote, "She will be kind and beautiful, but I don't know if she will be Korean or American--I don't care what species she is." Needless to say, we had an impromptu vocabulary lesson.

Glori Smith
Provo, Utah

As part of a review of a literature lesson about an oceanographer and the ocean, I brought in an audiotape of ocean sounds.

Our third graders listened intently as we passed around shells and ocean artifacts. When the tape was finished, I asked them if they could identify any of the sounds that they heard.

Several said they heard whale calls, waves crashing, and sea gulls. One boy raised his hand and gleefully added, "They're called 'sea gulls' because they live in the sea. If they lived in the bay, they would be called 'bagels'!"

Judy Lagen
Roseville, California

When reading about Anne Sullivan (Helen Keller's tutor) in my fourth grade class, the story refered to Anne as a "yankee girl." I stopped and asked the class what they thought a "yankee girl" was? One boy replied, "She's a baseball girl."

Sara Moore
Laguna Hills, California

Several years ago, I was teaching at a junior high school in Connecticut. One day when I was collecting homework, one of my students said that he had left his homework in his locker.

Knowing that his locker was on the other side of the school where the teachers' mailboxes were located, I suggested that he could leave his homework in my mailbox.

He said, "But Mr. Litevich, I don't know where you live."

John Litevich
Killingworth, Connecticut

While teaching a unit on short stories, I asked on a quiz for the definition of "point of view." One student apparently did not grasp the concept because her definition read,"Point of view is what the person in the story thinks of the person who is reading the story."

Stacy Whited
Cookeville, Tennessee

I teach first grade and one day I asked my students if they remembered what the seasons were. Promptly, a little girl in my class perked up and said, "Deer season and bird season Mrs. Brady!"

Kami Brady
Havre, Montana

When I entered the cafeteria , a student rushed up to me and complained that two other students were swearing.

They were highly indignant when I told them of the other child's complaint. "Oh, no, Mrs. Gaji, we weren't swearing. We were just telling each other all the naughty words that we know."

Kathy Gaji
Binghamton, New York

Sounds like the 18th century

My middle school orchestra students listen to classical music each week and then write a reflection. I thought one student had written a fairly thoughtful response to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture until the last sentence: "I think this piece was written in the 1700's."

Julia Black
St. Louis, Missouri

I am a reading specialist, and one morning I was administering a phonemic awareness test to a first grader. I have them echo a word I have said and they have to manipulate the word somehow--whether it is changing the initial consonant, changing medial sound, a syllable, removing a phoneme, etc.

For the sample item the teacher says, "Say steamboat" and the child says "steamboat." Then the teacher says, "Say steamboat but don't say boat." The child, of course, should reply "steam."

We reached a particular item and I said to the first grader, "Say cucumber." He said "cucumber." Then I said, "Now say 'cucumber' but don't say 'cu.' "He thought and thought and confidently replied, 'Pickle.'"

Jeanine Heil
Doylestown, Pennsylvania

One of the students in my sixth grade honors science class got wind of the fact that I am a former attorney and once worked for the government--bringing juvenile offenders to justice in the courtroom.

One day he raised his hand and asked, "Mr. Keen, is it true that you used to prostitute kids?" I let a beat go by, and then said with an absolutely straight face, "Jonathan, could the word you are looking for possibly be ... 'prosecute?'" He replied, "Yeah, that's it!"

Since I could just imagine one of them going home and making the same mistake when telling their parents, I assured everybody that there was a very big difference between the two words!

Roger Keen
West Hills, California

The first week of school I asked my sixth graders to write about themselves. One student wrote, " I'm enjoying all my classes and teachers. I especially love jim."

Mary Kinzer
Birmingham, Missouri

While lining to go to gym one of my first graders children looked at my file cabinets and commented on what the labeling of drawers had said. He asked what does "misc. items" mean. I told him it stood for miscellaneous items. He responded, "I thought your name was Mrs. Riepl."

One day my first graders were doing some creative writing in their journals. They were asked to think about what might have happened in the story, write a sentence and draw a picture. When I went up to one of the children to ask what he had written, he said, "How do I know, I can't read."

Pat Riepl
Cliffwood Beach, New Jersey

One day last year, my World History students were using the library to conduct research for their semester projects. One of my female sophomore students came to me because she was having some problems finding a research on her topic - corporal punishment. I suggested doing a general search on the Internet. After doing a general search on the words "corporal punishment," we selected the first match which contained a brief description like "corporal punishment stories and pictures." The page loaded very quickly. To my surprise and embarrassment, as well, the page contained about a dozen images of nude women in very explicit positions. So much for my helping her!

Craig A. Belt
South Newton High School
Kentland, Indiana

As part of a review of an literature lesson about an oceanographer and the ocean, I brought in an audiotape of ocean sounds. Our third graders listened intently as we passed around shells and ocean artifacts. When the tape was finished, I asked them if they could identify any of the sounds that they heard. Several said they heard whale calls, waves crashing, and sea gulls. One boy raised his hand and gleefully added, "They're called "sea gulls" because they live in the sea. If they lived in the bay, they would be called "bagels"!"

Judy Lagen
Roseville, California

When reading about Anne Sullivan (Helen Keller's tutor) in my 4th grade class, the story refered to Anne as a yankee girl. I stopped and asked the class what they thought a yankee girl was? One boy replied, " She's a baseball girl."

Sara Moore
Laguna Hills, California

As all teachers know, it is always advisable to write any new terms on the blackboard or place them on a transparency where they can be seen by everyone in the class. A few years ago, while presenting a lecture on crystals to my Chemistry class, I made the mistake of not writing down the words, "x-ray diffraction"; even though I used the term several times during my presentation. A few days later I gave a quiz which included a question that could be correctly answered by the term "x-ray diffraction". One of my students who may have taken notes during my presentation but obviously did not check the spelling of her notes provided the following phonetically correct response: "X-rated fraction".

Joseph Pekich
Melbourne, Florida

Got Laughs?

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