5th Grade Zen comes from things happening or said in my school day that are so head-scratchingly odd or layered with unexpected wisdom that all I can do is step back and appreciate the moments... then later share them as Facebook status updates. To commemorate this being the final week of the school year (and likely my final week as a 5th grade teacher), I’ve put together a list of all the Moments of 5th Grade Zen that have occurred in the past year. Read, enjoy, and perhaps learn:
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"Fruit Smiles are the best fruit snacks because they don't taste like fruit."
"This grocery bag smells like a grocery bag."
During a lesson on bus safety we discussed how unsafe it is for students to stick their arms or heads out of the bus windows. Someone raised the point, "But dogs stick their heads out the windows of cars all the time." The only response I could think of: "And that's why dogs aren't allowed to ride the bus."
During a small group discussion, someone in class mentions Roman numerals. One student's response: "Those are great! I love Ramen noodles!"
Generally speaking, ten-year-old boys haven't mastered the subtleties of applying the Axe Body Spray discovered in their older brother's bedrooms.
While switching classes today one little girl had her arms so full of books she felt she had to carry her paper drinking cup in her mouth. While doing this, she sneezed right into the cup. To her credit she didn't drop it, but I hope she found a new one by the next time she was thirsty.
A girl came up to my desk during a test today. She asked me to read one of the questions to her. I did. "Okay," she said. "I just thought it was kind of a tongue twister. I wanted to see if you could say it."
The winds were strong this afternoon, and my windows were open to keep the room temperature down. Predictably, this distracted a lot of kids. To bring them back I said, "Okay, yes. It's windy out. But you've all spent your entire lives on Earth and you've seen wind before. It's nothing new." To which one little wisenheimer scientist replied, "But you can't actually *see* wind."
After I finished giving directions to the class about how to complete their next activity, I asked if anyone had any questions. One student raised her hand. "Yeah. Did you get a haircut?"
As I'm doing some incidental planning with another teacher in the back of the classroom, a student walks up with a question about a project. I answer the question. The student stands there looking at us for a few unnecessary seconds before finally narrating to himself, "Okay. I'm going to walk away now." And then he did just that.
"I never have any lucky days!... Well, except for yesterday."
This morning as the students were arriving, one of my boys walked right up to me and said, "I had to take the garbage out last night when it was snowing, and it was really cold. But it was so beautiful I just stood there and looked at it for awhile."
We conducted a survey about favorite after-school snacks for a data collection/graphing activity this afternoon. Instead of just raising her hand for the ‘other’ category, one girl loudly announced her choice: “Chocolate-covered popcorn, baby!”
A group of students made a poster to represent themselves. So of course one of the drawings they included is a volcano with birthday cakes erupting from it.
During class I announced there were five more minutes for the students to finish their warm-up problems. One student said, "Five minutes?! Can I have a little time to work? I'm not Jimmy John's!"
A student approached my desk with a wrapped gift and said, "My mom wanted me to give you this." Then he set it down and walked away without another word.
I gave a math test that had questions where student to answer with "greater than/less than" inequality symbols, like this: <. Students will often draw jagged teeth in these symbols to make them into mouths. But today, one girl went further and turned her symbol into a detailed, violently hungry-looking shark.
I recently gave an assignment in which students had to find a way a man could time 30 minutes using newly-purchased 9-minute and 13-minute sand glass timers. One student answered, "He could just set a real timer for 30 minutes like everyone else, and not waste his money on junk like that."
This Conversation:
Student: "I'm not very happy today."
Me: "Why is that?"
Student: "Because nobody laughs at any of my jokes."
Me: "Well, you know, not everybody is going to laugh at the same things."
Student: "I know. But these jokes are FUNNY!"
I'm grading tests today. One problem asked the students to write a real-world situation to match a mathematical expression. One student wrote a situation about a teacher named "Miss Anthrope."
One of my girls spilled some guacamole she'd brought for her snack on her pants. She wiped it off the best she could but left behind a small stain. She brought this concern to me. I looked down at the pants she was wearing -- camouflage leggings overlayed with some kind of indecipherable flower pattern. "I really don't think anyone is going to notice," I told her. She looked down at her pants for a moment, looked back up at me and said, "Good point."
In today's math lesson I was introducing surface area. After I gave a brief preview of our activities, one of the more clever girls raised her and said with a noticeable grin, "So we really are thinking outside of the box today, aren't we?"
During my prep time today I was in my room with the door locked and the lights off, enjoying the natural daylight coming in through the windows. My door handle starts shaking, hard. I open it and see two of my girls needing to get something they forgot. "It'd work better to knock," I said.
"But the lights were off," they replied. "We didn't know you were in the room!"
"So if you didn't know I was in here," I asked, "why did you think shaking the handle that much was going to do anything?"
They had no response.
At the end of the day I walked into the media center to pick up the class and noticed the room was filled with a certain smell. Our media specialist sees me scrunching up my face at it and says: "I love the smell of 5th grade in the afternoon. It smells like... attitude."
I gave a test today. The kids have been repeatedly coached to take their time and check their work. About half an hour into the test, one boy decides he's done. Immediately after he hands it in the dam breaks wide open and fourteen other students, none of them wanting to be the first one done, hand their tests in as well.
Two kids are playing a game when one tries to sneak around the rules for an extra turn. "You already played, you liar!" says his partner. The sneaky kid grins and replies, "I didn't lie. I just didn't tell the truth."
Today was Historical Character Day. One boy walks in wearing a white and green "Cat in the Hat" style hat and a long, thick white wizard beard. I asked him who he was dressed as. His answer: "Abraham Lincoln."
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Happy summer, everyone! May your upcoming school year be filled with inordinate amounts of accidental wisdom.
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