Kid Quips

Tagging posts is a good thing. I ran across the tag "kid quips" while I was working on another post and I was amused by what I found there.

I have kept up my goal to "catch a fish" every day of the school year in my new little purple journal. I now have 88 short snippets of the year that I can look back on and remember why I do this crazy job and why I love this crazy job.

My entry for last Thursday is a good "kid quip." We are working hard on the science standard about the predictable patterns of movement between the sun and the Earth. Tilt of the axis, direct and indirect rays of sunlight, seasons that are opposite in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

A. looked up with those big brown eyes and sighed and said, "It was so much easier when I was younger and there were just the four seasons, back before I even knew the axis existed, let along the tilt and the direct and indirect rays of the sun."

"Yeah," I said. "That's the joy and the sorrow of growing up and learning the science behind what makes the world work -- there's joy in knowing, and there's sorrow in losing that simple view of the world."

Kid Conversations

Hugh MacLeod, Gaping Void.com

I got the new Time for Kids iPad app, and we were looking at one of the articles (projected on the IWB). In it, we learned about a tiny dinosaur skull that was found in the field in the 1960s, put in a drawer at Harvard, taken out of the drawer again in the mid '80s, but only truly DISCOVERED as something amazing and new just recently.

I added this to my "All of the science has not been discovered yet" speech I give every time I get the chance. I don't want kids to give up on a career in science because they have some kind of perception that the field of science is a thing with boundaries. If they are curious about the way something in our world (or out of it, or within it) works, they have the beginnings of a career in science.

I thought of "Science is not finished" again yesterday when my new family doctor told me about a recent study that purports that too many cancers are being detected by mammograms. "Too many?" I asked, incredulously. Seems that not all of the tiny cancers they are finding are malignant, and some of them could actually be "cleaned up" by the body's own immune system, if given time. All well and good, but until we can tell the difference between the cancers, I'm going to remain happy that mammograms are finding lots of cancer early. And I'll pass this bit of "yet-to-be-discovered" science on to the next generations.

I'll end with this, overheard as we passed a line of tiny kinders giving themselves a hug with one arm, finger pressed to lips with the other, listening to their teacher give "When we get back to the classroom" instructions. I'm sure it will be in (or the inspiration for) a poem that I have yet to write. B said,

"I remember being that little, but I don't remember growing."

Kid Quips

It's been awhile since I had a really good one to share. Today's was a doozie.

At the end of the day, Boy A was by the door tying his new sneaks. Real hot, fast looking shoes. I told him they looked like they ought to have wings on the heels, like that Greek god. "You know who I'm talking about, don't you?" I asked.

"The Red Bull guy?" he replied.

Groan. The curse of popular culture.

So I had to go over to my mythology shelf and check. On the way, I asked Boy B, who was likely to know the answer so I wouldn't have to look. "Is it Hermes with the wings on his shoes?" I asked.

"No, Herpes, isn't it?"

"Uh, no. For sure not Herpes. That's a disease."

Kid Quip, Part Two

The week before Easter, Student B asked, "What's Good Friday?"

I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the death of Christ by crucifixion, and His raising from the dead on Easter.

He looked at me, incredulous, and asked, "What's all that got to do with the Easter Bunny?"

Kid Quip

I asked a student to stop tipping back in his chair. I said I wasn't interested in doing first aid.

Student B asked, "Is there such a thing as second aid?"