School Daze

Another nutty week in teacher land.

First, we had the little girl who, when cutting out pictures to glue on a paper to show how the water cycle works, turned to her seatmates and announced, "Look, I'm going to cut my lip." They of course all said, "Oh, no, don't do that." And she proceeded to actually use her scissors to, yes, cut a big gash in her lower lip. DUH...

I turned to see everyone gasping and exlaiming and her with both hands clapped over her face, blood seeping through the fingers. We rushed her up to the nurse. Mom came and took her away. Today, two days later, she is back with 6 or 7 stitches holding her lower lip together. It isn't at all swollen like I thought it would be. But then, there really wasn't any bruising trauma or blunt force, it was a pretty surgical cut--clean and quick. I don't get it at all.

Although, her previous teacher told me this morning that she didn't allow the child to have scissors at all in the last two grades because she would often cut other students' clothing. Gee, I wish I'd have known that. However, the scissors she used were her own, from her backpack.

Second, we were discussing the water cycle and how evaporation happens and that when water evaporates it leaves behind all the other non-waterish parts like minerals and salts. I asked if any of them had noticed that a glass that had contained a tiny bit of milk will eventually have just a smear of white on the bottom from the milk sugars after the water evaporates and a juice glass will just have a smear of fruit sugars, etc. Somehow, and I'm still trying to figure this out, we got from there to mammals feeding their babies milk. And that mothers feed their young milk from the mother's bodies, and I had two boys immediately deteriorate into the gasping, laughing, red-faced mode that sometimes happens whenever human body functions are mentioned.

But significantly, they both proclaimed complete ignorance of, and total disbelief in, the concept that mothers feed babies milk from their bodies. Any mammal mothers....I asked about dogs, horses, cats, cows??? Nope, never saw anything like that, didn't believe me, couldn't conceive of it.

By then, other kids were chiming in to back me up. In fact, one guy backed me up with, "I remember watching my mom feed my little brother from her boobies all the time." You can imagine the reaction we got then. Sigh. So, I just used my "quiet down gesture" and then said, "Well, since we're talking about science, we'll use the science terms--the milk comes from breasts or nipples, or udders, depending on the mammal."

As you can imagine, it didn't really calm things down all that much, but I bravely marched on and we returned to our original topic of the water cycle and evaporation and all that. But, first I implored that anyone who still needed information on the topic to sit down with their parents and talk about it. And to look up mammals on-line or in a book and get the facts. Really.

I'm not adverse to discussing it at all, but sheesh...decorum is needed ladies and gentlemen and that is in limited supply with nine year boys. Bless their hearts.