Sitting in the school library during a faculty meeting today, I was reminded of the famous graffiti rant made by Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye. Posted on the wall next to my table was a poster advertising a high school math and science tutoring program run by Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The program provides high school students homework help from college students via a free 1-800 hotline. Based on the information in the poster “Ask Rose,” seemed like a great program. Nevertheless, someone still took it upon themself to scrawl the word “b***h” across the bottom of the document.

Vandalism of this nature is not completely unheard of at my school. I’ve seen  “F*** School” carved into cafeteria tables. We have textbooks with “school sucks,” written across the pages in black sharpie. Students routinely use the bathroom walls as a forum to spread vulgar rumors and insults.

Smoke Weed? 420? Whatever happened to 867-5309?

Lately, the vandalism has taken on a marijuana theme (perhaps in celebration of the informal Weed Holiday, April 20th aka 420). For the last week, the men’s room has become a marijuana wailing wall of sorts with students paying tribute to the drug by scribling sentiments like “get high,” “smoke weed,” “420 forever,” and “i love weed” on the smooth portions connecting the concrete bricks in the wall. Each night the custodians wipe or paint the slate clean, only to have a new crop of messages appear the next day. It’s the janitorial equivalent of the Wack-a-Mole game.

I'm Sure We Can All Enjoy the End of School Without a Bong, Thank You.

Classrooms are not immune from the pro-weed vandals either. Last Monday a substitute was in my room while I attended a conference. I returned the next morning to find a drawing of a  foot-high (no pun intended) bong burning furiously on the white board beneath my “End of the Year Coutdown.”

When I see this junk on the walls, tables, and books around the school, I always wonder what the students think about it.

Do they think it is funny? Does it bother them? Are they numb to it? Does it encourage them to misbehave? (Broken Windows theorists would say, yes)

I know how I feel. Like Holden Caufield.

Related posts:

1. Thank You, Google
2. Spreadsheet Project: Black Friday Blues
3. Weiner, Arkansas – the Capital of Adolescent Humor

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Tuesday, January 7th

Thank You, Google

I was hoping over Christmas Break that my room would be forgotten as the choice hangout spot of students who would rather browse the internet than go to lunch. My hopes were dashed as the 3^rd period lunch bell rang and the usual handful of kids trickled into the computer lab to get their daily fix of Facebook (MySpace is sooooo 2005) and YouTube.

The biggest problem with having kids around during lunch is that our lunch period falls during my planning period – and it’s very hard to get anything prepared when I have kids in my room.

Take today for instance. Cara Bentham spent her entire lunch period in my room looking up local sex offenders. Why? I have no idea. But, after each one she found, she provided me with a full breakdown of what the offender did and how close they lived to local points of interest. So, for half of my planning – a time where I should be busy making lessons or grading papers – I was having the following conversation over and over:

“Mr. Martin…hey, look at this guy!”

“He looks like a freak, what’d he do?”

“It says rape,’”

“Yikes, where does he live?”

“Oh God!  It says he lives right next to the gas station! I’m not going there anymore!”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea.”

“Mr. Martin, Mr. Martin, check out this one!”

The only variation in this seemingly endless dialogue about local degenerates came at the very end, or somewhere around the 11^th sex offender.

“Mr. Martin, hey, here’s another one.  This one lives out by the firehouse.”

“Oh, yeah?”  At this point, I was not even looking up from what I was trying to work on.

“Yeah!”

Thirty, maybe forty seconds passed. I assumed the game of find the pervert was over.  I looked out of the corner of my eye and noticed Cara squinting at the monitor.

“Mr. Martin, what’s sodomy?” Cara asked.

I responded with what I always do when a student asks me a question for which I do not have an immediate answer: “Huh?”

“What’s sodomy mean? It says he got in trouble for sodomy.”

I turned and faced Cara.  Having just had a daughter, I really didn’t want the memory of my first “birds and bees” conversation to be a discussion of the particulars of butt-love with a 20 year old, second-time high school senior. So, instead of launching into the whole “when a man and woman, or two men, or two women and a plastic object, love each other very much” speech, I decided to go a different route.

“I’m not sure, Cara, why don’t you just Google it.”

She nodded and began pecking the letters out one at a time on the keyboard. She was on the second “o” in “sodomy” before I interrupted her.

“Oh, Cara.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking up from her keyboard.

“Make sure you do a web search instead of an image one, okay.”

Related posts:

1. Vandalism Blues
2. The Legend of Mr. Tooters
3. Weiner, Arkansas – the Capital of Adolescent Humor

On this day, April 7, 2009, another breakthrough was made – one that will be remembered for all eternity by sophomore boys who enjoy sophomoric humor. For it was today, at 1:03 pm, when two of my Computer Applications students discovered a town called Weiner.

Weiner, Arkansas...Home of the Fighting Cardinals

The discovery came while the students were researching weather conditions for a database project. Each two person team was assigned the task of gathering current weather conditions from 20 different cities, and compiling the information into a database, where it could then be organized and manipulated in a number of different ways.

For some of my students, the idea of creating a database is  about as appealing as the idea of having an acne outbreak before a big date, so I tried to incorporate an element of fun into the assignment by encouraging the class to find cities with odd names. (Although the suggestion may not seem like much, I have found that small twists of this nature can make the difference between a student completing or not completing an assignment)

As I sauntered around the room, I noticed most of my students had taken the conventional route – selecting common cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, and Louisville. Then I came to “Brad” and “Steven,” my compadres in the back of the classroom. As I glanced at their computer screen, I noticed they had comprised a database solely of wacky towns. There was Tennessee, Illinois, Crapo, Maryland, Quitman, Georgia, Winner, South Dakota, Sheboygan, Wisconsin and Forks, Washington. Satisfied that my advice had taken hold with at least one group, I continued around the room. I returned to Brad and Steven moments later when I heard them laughing hysterically. When I asked them what they had found, all they could do was point at their screen, which was displaying up-to-the minute weather information for Weiner, Arkansas.

Part of me, the part that didn’t have to worry about maintaining order in a classroom with twenty-eight fifteen and sixteen year-olds, wanted to laugh. Hard. The “responsible teacher” part of me won out though, so I just grinned and told them that the preferred spelling of “weiner,” was in fact “w-i-e-n-e-r” (thank you, Principal Skinner). My spelling lesson did little to dampen their enthusiasm.

“What kind of stuff you think they have in Weiner?” Steven asked Brad excitedly, just before rephrasing the question and typing it into Google.

Normally Google processes queries in a snap, but Steven’s Weiner query seemed to take forever, which allowed plenty of time for a group of curious students to make their way back to see the results.

It turns out there’s not much in Weiner, AR. Just a school. The Weiner School District, to be exact. Of course, that link was where Steven’s mouse landed and within seconds, Brad and Steven were treating half of the class to an impromptu tour of the internet home of the Weiner High School Cardinals. The small group howled at the risqué irony when Steven clicked on February’s Teacher of the Month, Mr. Woody. Even the trivial statements made on the Principal’s page (“It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to Weiner High School”) drew a chorus of laughter.

After a few minutes, the laughter died down and the group of students returned to their seats to conduct their own Weiner research. One student, skilled in the art of browsing Wikipedia, noted that, with a total area of 1.4 square miles, Weiner just wasn’t that larg… “Brandon!” I cut the student off before he could finish.

As the bell rang and the students exited the room, I had the sinking feeling that I had inadvertently done more to improve the students’ comedic skills than their database building skills.

Related posts:

1. From the Cubicle to the Classroom
2. Vandalism Blues
3. The Legend of Mr. Tooters

Mr. Tooters takes a break from breaking wind to pause for a photo opp.

When Mr. Tooters began my class in early December, he had already achieved mythical status. My fellow teachers spoke cryptically about the seemingly mild-mannered boy, known by most as “Steven,” whose complete and utter lack of self-awareness allowed him to break wind in a classroom full of people without feeling embarrassed. Like all good legends, everyone had heard stories of Mr. Tooters’ exploits, but few could seem to recall having witnessed them firsthand. That notwithstanding, I still believed.

Nearly three months went by. I waited patiently for Steven to unveil his gassy alter-ego, but to no avail. I started to wonder if the Legend of Mr. Tooters would go the way of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster.

Then, last week, it happened. I had just finished demonstrating for my class the art of creating a table in Microsoft Access when all of the sudden, Mr. Tooters, without warning, raised half of his backside up from his chair and produced one of the most absurd farts in the history of public education.  The sound, a cartoonish “brrraaapppppppppp” that was not unlike the sound a push mower makes when first started, echoed off of the concrete block walls of my classroom.

I stared at Mr. Tooters in disbelief. I think I said “that did not just happen,” but in my shocked state, I may have just mouthed the words. The other students exchanged confused glances with one another in a futile attempt to make sense of what had transpired. Did he just? Was that a? No. He couldn’t have. Could he?

And then the smell set in. Confusion quickly turned to desperation as the back row vacated their seats in hopes of finding cleaner air near the windows. One student demanded that Mr. Tooters be dismissed to the bathroom to “go wipe himself.”

Mr. Tooters said nothing. His face was beet red – not from humiliation, but from choking back the laughter that resulted from seeing the momentary carnage his bodily function had wrought.

It was at that moment that I understood the beauty of Mr. Tooters. Some kids are good at sports. Some kids get good grades. Some kids bully other kids. Each of these things may give a student a sense of belonging, but none of them are necessarily unique. At some point, Mr. Tooters learned that it doesn’t take straight A’s, bulging muscles, or a lights-out fastball to earn respect in high school. Sometimes all it takes is a little gas.

Related posts:

1. Thank You, Google
2. Vandalism Blues
3. From the Cubicle to the Classroom