Things I Never Thought I Would Say (or hear)

 I work with children, and as such, that means I attempt to guide absolute chaos into some sort of order. Sometimes I can do this with limited success, sometimes I end up in a heaping pile of frustration. What is always consistent however, is the number of times I, or one of the children with which I work, says or does something so random it is inexplicable.

There was one instance that comes to mind when I taught 2nd grade. We would schedule regular brain breaks in which the kids could get up, dance, goof around for a bit, and get their wiggles out before moving onto another activity that required mental strain. It was my first year teaching, so I was relying mostly on recommended sites for my brain breaks. One such site had guided dances, and after working on math, I put one up on the screen and invited all the kids to stand up and dance.

Any teacher will tell you they have that 'one kid' in the class that needs physical exercise. They are the wiggly kid, the kid who punches their neighbor and has no idea why they did it, the kid who is up dancing in the middle of a grammar lesson. Without fail, these are always the kids who want to sit through the brain breaks.

During this particular time, I could tell my students were getting antsy. They needed to get up, to move, and so I picked something fast and fun, and I made it a requirement that all the students participate. As the music started and the kids began jumping and laughing and in some instances rolling their eyes because for some reason a 7 year old has a sense of embarrassment, I noticed one of my wiggly kids was still sitting. He had discovered my set of student dictionaries, and was looking over the words. In frustration, and because the music was so loud, I yelled across the classroom, "Put the dictionary away and start dancing." Not something I was expecting, or ever expected to say.

On another occasion while I was teaching 4th grade, I was setting up my computer to play a video for science while my students took a snack break. During this time I had a student approach me and asked if I wanted to hear a joke. Generally I love hearing kids jokes, they make absolutely no sense, or they are akin to Fozzy the Bear and only illicit laughs because they are horrible. This particular student had not yet learned the nuance of a good joke and would repeatedly tell variations on the same joke. His current iteration was along the lines of "Why did the _____(insert any animal here) cross the road? To get to the other slide." He told me this joke on repeat about 6-7 times a day, only changing the animal that crossed the road.

After he asked if I wanted to hear a joke, I told him that yes, I would love to hear his joke.

He started with one I had not yet heard from him, "What did the cat say when it died?"

To which I replied, "What?"

"Nothing, a dead cat can't talk."

I gave him a genuine snort, this was new and it was actually kind of funny. I guess this was too much encouragement, because he launched into a second joke.

"What did one cat say to the other cat?"

"What?"

"Get off your a** you lazy mother f***ing b**."

Obviously this wasn't what I was expecting to hear. I didn't laugh, but boy did I want to.

I pulled the student aside and told him that we didn't use those kinds of words in school. He was embarrassed and confessed to me he was just repeating some of the words he heard his dad say. Out of the mouth of babes.