Portraits (round 2)

Last week I showed you a drawing one of my students had done for me (of me) and I thought it was a pretty good representation of what I look like.  Then this happened...

I feel like it's actually a doubly bad photo of me.  I look strange in the actual colour photograph of myself and I look strange in the drawing.  In the defence of the girl that drew it... the scarf and badge combo was likely a hard one to draw.  She did well on my hair though... I actually think she did a better job on my hair than I did that morning.

Ah well, you can't win them all... a lesson I learned many years ago when I received this drawing of myself with a giant tenhead... yes my forehead is so big in that drawing that I don't think it could be called a forehead.

Pranks

This was new.

When I was teaching grade 8 I went through a month of pranks with them (as in them pranking me on Friday's by pushing tables up to the door of the room so that I couldn't get in... except I could because there was a 2nd door, they also strung tape across from my desk to a counter at ankle level so that when I walked by... and I did... I would get tape on my pants. They thought it was hilarious). But I digress.

My grade 11 Social Studies class almost got me.

It was a quiet class with about half of them missing (likely due to the fact that they were writing a test). Anyways, at the end of the period one group of boys decided it would be funny to take the cap off their water bottle (their water bottle still containing water) and turn it upside down (so that when I grabbed it the water would spill everywhere).

Unfortunately for them they never even got to witness me discovering their little prank because I never did. What they weren't counting on was another very helpful student that noticed the prank and cleaned it all up for me.

Better luck next time!

Portraits

When I go subbing one of my students favourite activities is to draw pictures of their new favourite substitute *ahemMEahem*.  Sometimes they turn out great.. and well sometimes you begin to wonder if that is actually what you look like.  I've been holding onto one of each of these for a while now and I went back and forth whether I wanted the more flattering one up first or not and I've decided I do.  So come back next week to see another portrait of yours truly done by a student!

You can't tell in the picture of me but that cardigan has elbow patches and she nailed it!

She even had me giving the peace sign... one of us was Asian.

To see other examples of pictures students have drawn of me click here (he even included the car I would drive and it's pretty cool).

Don't forget to come back next week to see the picture(s) that make me question what I look like

Lockdown

This week I was in a kindergarten classroom and we had a lock down to practice.  For those of that aren't familiar with this one would call a lock down at a school if an intruder entered the school and you needed to not run into them... or even if no one knew who it was and wanted to keep everyone safe.  I've never actually been to a school where we have actually had a lock down (and I'm quite thankful for that).

During a lock down the typical procedure is to lock the classroom door, turn out the lights, and close the blinds.  All the students sit against the wall that the door is on (typically).

So anyways, I knew about the lock down ahead of time and was instructed that I could tell the class about it because they were in kindergarten.  So we went over what we would do and that it was very important to sit quietly because if we were hiding and the person in the hallway could hear us there would be no point in hiding at all.  I told them the principal might come and check to make sure the door was locked and it would likely only last a few minutes.  They got a little worried about it but I just told them that we practice fire drills and none of us have been at a school where a fire has happened and so we have to practice this too... just to be safe.

Anyways, when all was said and done they did an alright job.  Some started to make noises and some started to hold back laughter (unsuccessfully) but over all it was okay.  Then one little boy comes up to me and says "Ms. Penner, do we practice lock downs in case a raccoon gets into the school?"  I thought about it for half a minute and decided that we might have a lock down if a raccoon was on the loose inside the school... although we likely wouldn't need to hide from it... just stay in the classroom and not let it in!  He then asked if we would do one if a bug got in... we decided probably not... because bugs get in all the time and don't pose as much as a threat.

The things kindergarten's come up with!