That sudden silence.

…. If you’ve been following my blog for long at all, you know that my classroom is really half of a big room with one of those retractable accordion walls.  You should also know that I hear a lot of stuff that goes next door through that wall. 

…. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet or not, but the other day I hung a blank poster on my board and titled it:

“Things we’ve learned about Mr. L through the wall.”

…. A couple of classes said that it was like stalking, and I pointed out that “Things I’ve learned about Mr. L by him following home” would be, but this isn’t.  That they got.

…. Today the class was working, and as anyone who’s been teaching knows, every now and again this odd silence just hits.  It happened today.  Right in the middle of one of Mr. L’s sentences, while he was reading something to the class. All we heard was him saying “when I was in junior high school I had a boyfriend who…".  We didn’t hear the rest, the class (myself included) burst out laughing.  He found it funny too.

…. Last week the vice-principal was talking about the dress code to the students during announcements.  He mentioned that anything that was distracting to the learning was not allowed.  He mentioned a few things, but when he got to low-cut shirts on the girls, and how it’s distracting to the boys in the class, one of my 8th grade boys chimes in with “It’s not distracting. We just stare.” Um, that’s the point.