Eyebrow Emergency: What They Don't Teach You in School

The following post is probably the single-most blog-worthy moment to happen to me since this whole self-indulgent charade began. Let me tell you. It is good. Hold on to your eyebrows.

What Had Happened Was.....

I am not one of those teachers who wakes up at 5:00 AM to walk the dog, do the crossword, and perform twelve sun salutations before making my way to school. I am much more akin to one of my high school Lit survey teachers who occasionally found herself blow drying her hair behind the desk as class began. It's just my way.

Because of this, I recently found myself loaded down with fresh copies and tearing around the corner of the 7th grade hall precisely ten minutes before the morning's first bell. There I ran into a boy who will be referred to Spock. The nickname will click later. 

A little back story....

Spock is the only student that I've ever run into at a roller derby bout. He's less Justin Bieber. More Marilyn Manson. He is less Southern Baptist. More Wiccan. He's more likely to be caught in knee-high, lace-up Converse than Wallabees. He is the only student who's ever asked me, "Ms. P, do you think I could get away with elbow-length fishnet gloves here?" He's less Twilight.  And more Tim Burton. In a word, he's unexpected - as was his coming request.

"Oh, Ms. P, I am SOOOO glad to see you!" he wailed, with an exhale befitting a marathoner crossing the finish line.

As he normally errs on the dramatic side, I continued my hustle to the classroom barely making eye contact. "Okay, what's up? What do you need, Spock?"

"Okay, seriously, this is an emergency. Do you have any eyeliner?"

Aware of his musical leanings and fashion experiments, a certain image flashed through my mind before I continued...

"Now, Spock, you know I'm here for you, but I'm not your cool aunt! I can't give you eyeliner. Talk to your parents about it."

Exasperated, he responded, "Oh, Ms. P, it is SO not like that. This is an emergency." Suddenly, he grabbed my arm with one hand and, with the other, pointed to his eyebrow - or should I say, where his eyebrow had once been. 

                                        

What remained was a sort of half-eyebrow. The remainder ran from the top of his nose to where the arch had once began. The effect left him looking permanently befuddled. It was social suicide. 

Like Lauren Conrad faced with a life-or-death fashion emergency, I cringed. 

I dropped my purse and set my copies down, dragging him into my classroom. "What DID you DO? Did you wax it? Where did you get wax? What was your goal? Were you BORED?!" I fired a barrage of endless questions at him.

He cut through my curiosity with basic brutal truth, "Ms. P, I really can't go into it. No, not wax. I shaved it. But the point is this...I'm 13. I'm in middle school. I cannot, will not go to class with half an eyebrow, or I will never be anyone but the boy with one and a half eyebrows."

He had me there. 

"You're right. But look, Spock. I don't have eyeliner on me. However, I do have something else." I pulled him to the back of my classroom where I have an organizer full of school supplies. I rummaged around and pulled out two Magic Markers. Black and Brown. "Take your pick, buddy."

When they said "preferred by teachers," I'm pretty sure they didn't have this in mind.

Ever the goth, he chose black. 

"Hold still," I demanded, summoning all the eyebrow-sculpting advice I had ever read in beauty magazines. I uncapped the marker, warned him against laughing, and went to town.

In that moment, I thought: No education college in the land could ever prepare its graduates for such a time as this. They really don't teach you everything in The Art and Science of Teaching.

And let me tell you, as I stepped back to admire my handiwork, I realized that I had drawn him an eyebrow that would make a drag queen proud.

With that and a warning to not scratch, itch, or even think about sweating, I sent him off to homeroom. At lunch when he saw me, he pointed excitedly to my masterpiece and asked, "Is it still there?!"

The next morning, he walked proudly into school with a fresh brow, drawn with eyeliner. I grinned and asked, "Oh! Did your mom give in? Or did you walk to the drugstore to buy it yourself?"

He shrugged, "When I came home yesterday looking like I did, she offered to fix it for me until it grows back in."

Apparently Mama Spock didn't appreciate my fine handiwork. 

The Retrospect Project, 2: Hunter Harris's Story

For a little background on The Retrospect Project, read this.

To read the introduction to today's author and his story, go here.

Without further ado...Hunter Harris's hilarious retrospective moment, which I'd like to call...

"The Boy with the Green Hair"

"I’ll be honest—I was not the coolest kid in middle school. In seventh grade, I was 6’4”, and I weighed barely 170 pounds. Needless to say, I was already fairly noticeable. Add large-frame glasses to that equation, and you have a unique combination of nerd. As a gangly, awkward being, I desperately needed an opportunity to put forward the “correct” image that my classmates (namely the girls) could appreciate.

See that kiddo with the goofy grin? Yeah, that would be him.

I had two musical inspirations for my new look. First, boy bands were still popular, though they were starting to decline. Now, I did not personally care for them, but girls loved them. I noted that they especially appreciated the blonde band members like Justin Timberlake, Nick Carter, and Lance Bass (in hindsight, how ironic). 

Backpacks, lunchboxes, and t-shirts with various quartets dominated the hallways. The boys knew that we had to at least pretend to appreciate the boy band genre if we were going to stand as sensitive, caring guys. 

Secondly, Eminem had just released The Marshall Mathers LP. If Eminem is popular now, he was almost god-like in the early 2000s. You had 0 street cred unless you could rap “The Way I Am” or “The Real Slim Shady.” Considering I went to a middle school that had an African American population that equaled upwards of eighty percent, Eminem gave the “white boys” a chance to be cool. I reveled in the opportunity. I had white t-shirts and black, baggy jeans, but I just couldn’t yet pay proper homage. 

As a brunette, I knew that Mother Nature had not blessed me with golden locks at that age, so, like millions of people each year, I planned to bleach my hair. Unfortunately, I had a mother with enough sense to forbid me to do something so ridiculous (I eventually wore her down next year, but that’s an entirely different, ridiculous story). Without the courage to disobey her or the finances to purchase blonde hair dye, I was left with very little opportunity to improve my lot in life. “Fortunately” for me, I was a fairly resourceful kid. I remembered that my brother and I had been given sidewalk chalk the previous Christmas.

Per my logic, yellow sidewalk chalk was just a slight downgrade from peroxide. Without testing how the chalk looked in my hair, I scraped the chalk all over my scalp before strutting to the school bus. Had my bus driver not been so apathetic that he actually looked at the students that rode his bus, my expressionist journey might have ended there. Also, my family lived in a rural area, so I was the oldest student to ride the bus, thus making me automatically cool to the elementary kids. With both of these factors in my favor, I felt like a king by the time we pulled onto campus. 

To make the story a bit more concise, I’ll just say that my hair was a huge hit—just not in the way I expected. When my peers saw my hair during our pre-class congregation, they did not become instantly jealous or attracted, as I hoped. No, they laughed. Uncontrollably. Our assistant principal (thank God for small mercies), hearing the cackling of my friends, found me, and quickly escorted me to the boys’ bathroom. I knew I only had one option to save myself from detention—head dunking. Left alone to my shameful enterprise, I noticed my hair for the first time in the mirror above one of the sinks. Instead of the crisp, golden base I expected, my hair was closer to a lime-green hue. 

Instead of Eminem or Mr. Timberlake, I looked more akin to Joey Fatone. Joey was not cool; Joey was never cool. If the shame wasn’t enough, I had to go to the rest of my classes with the helmet that grows from my wet, unbrushed hair. 

I learned that day that I was better off just accepting my own nerd-dom, rather than trying to cultivate a non-organic persona. Though it was a long road, I learned to appreciate my potential, rather than prop up my deficiencies. And, years later, I found friends, even potential dates, that could appreciate the nerd in me."

I really don't think I could have topped that story. And what a fantastic "moral." Do you have a story to share? If so, email it to Ms. P at bestinclassblog@gmail.com.

Just a thought.

In Mississippi, the average daily cost per inmate for 2010 was $39.56. Multiply that by 365 days, and that equals $14,439.40 for one year.


Mississippi's average yearly cost per student? $7,890.00.

Thank God for Mississippi, part 2

"Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Albert Einstein

Answers to these questions:
49)C
54)H
70)G
Did you get all 3 right? You are ADVANCED in 7th grade Language Arts in the state of MS.
Did you get 2 right? You are PROFICIENT in 7th grade Language Arts in the state of MS.
Did you get 1 right? You have a MINIMAL understanding of 7th grade Language Arts.
Did you get 0 right? You have a BASIC understanding of 7th grade Language Arts.


So, here are the problems.


1) Our tests are flawed.
And it's not just Mississippi. See some ridiculously bad test items here. Think about it. The statistics that are being used against us (For example - 47% of 7th graders are not "proficient" in reading and writing.) are based on whether or not our still-cognitively-developing students can parse questions like these. 

Questions that grown, college-educated adults have difficulty understanding. Is it possible that our schools are being measured with a broken ruler? Is the test just plain unfair? 


2) Every state takes a different test.

Don't believe me? Believe wiki. :)

How can we possibly compare scores from dozens of different tests as if they are the same one?

All the educational rankings that you read now are distorted. No scientist or researcher would trust data from an experiment with this many confounding factors. As educational researchers, we need to "control" our data by eliminating these extraneous factors. Only then can we see the TRUE state of America's education system. Flawed statistics will yield flawed solutions.

If we're going to be a data-driven education system, at least let it be valid data.

Now, what is the solution?
1) Solution 1: Common core standards. 
Now in non-teacher jargon - all states teaching the same things in the same grade year. Right now, every state has a different list of standards. that means if someone moves from Mississippi to New York, he isn't necessarily on the same page in school.

If we adopt a common core, we can all participate in the second solution.

2) Solution 2: A national test taken by all 50 states- 
If we are all taking the same test, then we can really see where each stands. Also, if every state is paying for this test, then hopefully its questions will be held to a higher level of accountability. We can then expect them to be written more clearly. Thus, the scores will be more accurate. 


Perhaps I'm being idealistic, but maybe then a reading test will actually judge a student's ability to read, not her ability to take a standardized test.

How can you help?


1) Educate yourself.
            A) Explore online:
                 -Fair Test
                 -The Huffington Post
                 -The Daily Riff
                 -The Innovative Educator's "We Would Prefer not to Take your Tests"
            B) Read a book:
                 -Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade
                 -Measuring Up: What Educational Testing Really Tells Us
                 -Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It
                 -The Death and Life of the Great American School System


2) Educate your circle.
         Once you learn a little bit, open your mouth and don't stop talking. In the current culture of education reform, the voice of the teacher is under-respected. The voice of YOU, the concerned citizen, is king. So, please, speak. 

If you're hankering for the Mississippi Department of Education's contact information after struggling with these questions, I'd be more than happy to provide it. Tell them Ms. P sent you. And if you're waiting for the punchline of this normally-amusing blog, look in the mirror, Mississippi. This post is more of a dark comedy.

ADVANCED but only because I have access to the answers,
Ms. P

Thank God for Mississippi.

People like to poke fun at Mississippi's teachers and students for our less-than-desirable reputation in education. (Need evidence of our shoddy statistics? Look here and here. For starters.) It's such a regular occurrence that "Thank God for Mississippi" even has its own entry in the Urban Dictionary.

Apparently it's a regular response when state rankings are reported. Especially if you hail from the 2nd worst state. No worries, you'll always be ahead of the Magnolia State!

But before you take the easy way out and hang your head in shame OR point and laugh, let me ask you one thing. As an educated adult, could you pass Mississippi's 7th grade Language Arts standardized test? Don't worry. It's multiple choice.

Easy, right?

Consider this a pop quiz. Normally, Mississippi students have to answer 40 reading questions and 40 writing questions over 2 days. But since you're probably a little rusty, I'll only ask you to answer 3.

From the 2008 MCT2 practice test:

From the 2009 MCT2 practice test:

From the 2010 MCT2 practice test:

Please leave a comment with your answers. I'm going to tally up the responses and see how we do.

No cheating. Don't forget. I have eyes in the back of my head.

I'm watching you,

Ms. P

8 Snow Day Activities

What students don't realize is that teachers are just as excited about a snow day as they are. Students may think they've got the market cornered on night-before-the-possible-snow-day superstitions (inside out pajamas, ice cubes down the toilet, wooden spoon under pillow), but they would be wrong.

Similar thoughts run through our heads as teachers. If I finish those lesson plans, I bet we will have a snow day. If I'm not prepared, I just know we won't. I'm just not going to look out the window. I'll get ready as usual. If I bound out of the bed and run to the window, it surely won't be snowing. 


The moral of the story is that everybody likes a break, regardless of how much you love your job. However, when the snow day does come (like it did for me today), the magic wears off by about 2:00 in the afternoon. You've run through the laundry list of traditional activities. Snow ice cream. Snow man. Snow angels. Hot chocolate. Golden Girls re-runs. And now you're bored. You're stir crazy. Though you'd admit it to no one, you kind of miss those little cotton headed ninny muggins that you'd normally be teaching in 5th period.

Here are 8 non-traditional endeavors to fill your time (that don't involve that ubiquitous stack of ungraded papers):

1) Make animal masks for your eggs. Sure, it will be harder to scramble those boogers in the morning, but - darnit- they'll be the cutest protein-packed product in your fridge until then.

2) Name a math theorem after yourself.

3) Make Edward Scissorhands winter gloves with hot glue, plastic knives, and a little ingenuity.

4) Make an alien abduction lamp with dollar store supplies.

5) Send snow, frozen in dry ice, to a complete stranger.

6) Make a wager on how many oranges you can balance on your cat.

 

7) B-boy Abe Lincoln, anybody?

8) And finally, design a miniature replica of Stonehenge out of cereal. Rice Krispyhenge.

Perhaps you're more productive on your snow days? I certainly hope not. ;)

Wishing my dogs would stay still long enough for me to stack this last orange,

Ms. P

We love you, Miss Hannigan.

Well hello, my little pig droppings. Let me tell you, some days of teaching are particularly trying. Don't get me wrong. I love my 154 children, but sometimes their hormones get the best of them. And me.

On days when I've been plagued with that especially contagious strain of middle-school girl drama, I de-stress on the way home from work by screeching out my best Ms. Hannigan impression, particularly the Carol Burnett Ms. Hannigan. And specifically, the song "Little Girls."

Some women are dripping with diamonds.

Some women are dripping with pearls. 

Lucky me! Lucky me! 

Look at what I'm dripping with- 

Little girls.

I'd have cracked 

Years ago 

If it weren't for 

My sense of humor.

Some day I'll land in the nut house 

With all the nuts and the squirrels 

There I'll stay 

tucked away

Until the prohibition of 

Little girls. 

I highly recommend it for stress relief. If your car is fresh out of bathtub gin, you can always pretend like your smart phone is a flask. By the time your commute is over, you will have exorcised all your internal demons and be ready to face the world again.

Mentoring under Ms. Burnett,
Ms. P

The Kid Without Clean Paper

Middle schoolers are generally predictable in their unpredictability. Here's what I mean. You figure out their quirks and patterns by this time in the school year. A newcomer might find it odd that a student in my 5th period communicates primarily in various bird-like squawks and whistles; however, it would take me completely by surprise if I heard Birdboy carry on a conversation comprised of full sentences and absent of squeaks.

Birdboy, however, is not today's topic of discussion. He's predictable in his unpredictability. 

Occasionally, a student comes along who is impossible to peg. Refuses to be pigeon-holed. Would drive the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit to drink.

Meet Exhibit B: We'll call him Mr. Potato Head. His only topics of interest are very specific cartoon characters and very specific foods. Sponge Bob. Oscar the Grouch. Potatoes. Green Beans. It was muffins today. He was the author of the first Get This Kid a Book Deal. Genius right?

But then there's the side that turns this in...

Directions: Write a more descriptive synonym or phrase to improve the word choice in the journal entry.

(on a potato-fixated day, obviously)

Today's persuasive letter is my favorite surprise from Mr. Potato Head thus far, though.

It reads:

Dear Paper Makers,

      My teachers tell me to get a clean sheet of paper, but you only sell them with lines! It says loose-leaf paper, but copy paper is clean! You need to clean off these lines! NOW! (Pleas) (sic).

                                                                         From,

                                                                         The Kid Without Clean Paper, Mr. Potato Head

I guess it's true what they say. There is a fine line between genius and insanity.

Walking the line,

Ms. P