Gross

I overheard a grade 11 student say this while preparing for a lab activity involving food:

My hands haven't been this clean in, like, two years!

I really could have gone without that information.

Physics!

Parent teacher night! Right now! Woo!

Guess how many parents I've seen so far? 1...and we're a half hour into a 2 hour run. Someone kill me...

My assitant head is our resident physics teacher and tonight it is getting a bad rap:

"My daughter heard physics is hard. Should she still take it next semester?"

This is just one comment out of many that are usually thrown around about this branch of the sciences.

However, one of our school's star students came by, randomly, to inform my assistant head that he will be in his grade 12 physics class next semester. We procedeed to tell the student that physics has been getting dumped on tonight. His response made me smile:

"There's nothing wrong with some physics. It's what makes the world work!"

Awesome.

Rich!

If I had a dollar for every student who told me they "need math and science because I want to be a C.S.I." I would have many, many dollars...

Maybe Newton was wrong...

This one from a colleague of mine.

A question from a lab:

"When we use the gas jets in class for Bunsen burners, why does the flame not travel down the pipe and cause an explosion?"

Answer: "Because the flame is forced up by gravity."

High Level Skills

This one from the grade 12 university level biology course:

One student remarked while constructing a model of a phospholipid bilayer (think cell membrane), "Sir, I don't know how am I suppose to make this model in 3D."

I was covering a class on Monday when a student (who is unknown to me, by the way) asks "Sir, were you at the [small town] fair on Friday night?"

Me: "Yeah. Where was I when you saw me?"

Student: "You were walking that way." [she point ahead of her while delivering this statement.]

What I actually said: "Oh, you mean the midway."

What I wanted to say: "Could you be anymore vague? What does that even mean?!"

I think I made the right choice. Normally I wouldn't pass up an opportunity like this but I figured I didn't know the student and it would be a really bad first impression. Some of my colleagues disagree, however.

A Productive Use of Time

A grade 12 student was talking to one of my colleagues about another teacher whose last name is a type of cheese.

"Miss, Mr. Cheese wanted to know if I had a fourth period prep. I told him 'No' and asked him why. He said 'Oh, that's too bad. I wanted you to wax my car.'"