(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things

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Here are some of the more entertaining responses to questions I've asked/activities I've ran in class recently.

Where would you like to sit when I make a seating plan?

"I want to sit at the back because I'm tall" (lots of kids wrote the opposite, but this was the only one who was considerate enough to think about the short kids)

"I want to be near Mr. Dave desk because I suck in math. I'll like in front"

"In the second line because I can't see very well. I (HEART) CANADA" (brown-noser)

"In wath ever place the important is the class." (let's hope this kid is sitting at the front of English class)

What was one thing you liked about math class last year?

"Well, I really think math sucks, I hate numbers and formulas, but I liked the teacher because honestly he was very good at math, he was very cool, handsome and cute. By the way, math is cool, I like having it as a subject, and I do care about it. But I hate having homeworks everyday, I know it really helped us do better and become better students but it was really boring and it was such a disaster, but anyways I can survive math classes for another five years."

(this is all over the place - this person alternately hates, respects and genuinely likes math, touches on the mindless tedium of homework, professes their love and ends with a rumination on the state of their educational future. A Tour de Force.)

What are you excited for in math class this year?

"Well, I expect to learn more about equations cause I want to be a MACANIC ENGINERE." (he's already got the spelling of an engineer down)

In class on Monday we did an activity on Cartesian coordinates in which I had the kids draw a picture on a grid and then write instructions on how to re-create the picture using ordered pairs. Some of the more creative pictures included: a really sweet guitar, better than I could have done, the word "gringo" (by an American kid) and a train, complete with emanating puffs of smoke of escalating sizes.

Here's a response that isn't so much hilarious as just plain amazing. In grade 7, we were talking about geometry terms, and specifically the difference between lines, line segments and rays. I asked the kids to come up with everyday objects that are analogous to each of these things, for example a line is like a highway because it's continuous on both ends, a ray is like a flashlight because it has one fixed end and one unfixed end, and a line segment is like a rope because it has 2 fixed ends.

Well, when I was asking about rays, one kid told me that the number Pi is like a ray because it keeps going forever in one direction (i.e. its decimal places). That is some seriously abstract thinking.

On Tuesday, we did an activity where I asked the kids to find and measure 10 angles in the classroom. Some of the more hilarious "found" angles:

• my coffee cup (360˚)
• the kid's protractor (180 ˚ - measuring that must have been kind of meta)
• a golf club (there were no golf clubs in the classroom, I don't know where he got that idea)
• the fan (this required standing under it and laser-sighting it through the translucent protractor - good thing it wasn't moving)
• the A-frame of a swing set that was obviously out the window
• an angle that the kid just blatantly drew on the board
• shirt collar with the top button undone, creating a bit of a v-neck
• one kid just went around measuring people's faces