Poetry

I gave the 10th graders a new seating chart today, and I then proceeded to spend the first 10 minutes of class listening to them complain about it. Subsequently, they now know that if they have a problem with the seating chart (or any other decision) I have made, they can come TALK (not complain) to me about it after class IFF (if and only if) they have a valid reason AND a possible solution to offer. Goodness.

I have one student who is hyper-chatty no matter who he is sitting by. I've even tried seating him alone in the front of the room. Then he tries to talk to me the whole time. Recently, I've been bombarded with incredibly BAD jokes such as, "Hey what is Sun Joon's brother's name?" And the punch line is him screaming, "MOON JOON!!!! GET IT?!? SUN JOON AND MOON JOON!!!" (Sun Joon is a student whose brother is actually named Sun Ho.) Said student has been banned from telling jokes in the classroom. He managed to sneak one in today though by raising his hand and asking me, "What is the similarity between a hexagon and a pentagon?" I was about to give him the geometric answer when he shouted, "THEY RHYME!!! GET IT?!? HexaGON and pentaGON!!!"

I looked at him skeptically, to which he responded, "What? Did you fail English or something? Why aren't you laughing? THEY RHYME!" I thought long and hard about pointing out that this is his second year in a row in the 10th grade, but I decided against it. Instead, I simply told him that those words don't rhyme. He insisted they do. So instead of arguing, I moved on. Then after the lesson, I had the class get started on their homework and (using some online help), I wrote the following poem and gave it to him. His name is Julian, BTW.

There once was a boy named Julian
Who only dreamed to be a beautician
But sadly, he was too Beckettian
So instead he became Belarussian

I asked him if it rhymed or not. He checked and said, "Of COURSE! The last word in each line ends in -ian!" So just to check, I said, "Wait. So you're telling me that your name, Julian, rhymes with the word 'beautician'?" He very confidently said it did. He then asked me to define beautician, Beckettian, and Belarussian for him. Once he was satisfied in knowing what the poem actually meant, he quieted down, and I thought the matter was dropped.

But when the final bell rang, he came over to my desk, dropped a piece of paper on it, and said, "Now I wrote a poem for you. Read it."

There once was a woman named Abby
Who was always very naggy
She was very mean to Julian
She thought he was a hooligan
She always made him fail
Because she thinks he wants to do nails


Can I just say - BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!