Single Digits

We are down to 9 days of school!

The last few weeks of school are both exhilarating and infuriating. They are infuriating because both teachers and students are antsy and done with school, especially if the weather is nice.

But they are exhilarating as well because if you're lucky, your kids have finally gotten to the point where you can have real discussions and all of a sudden you realize just how far they have come in a few months. This past week we have been talking about globalization and consumerism (materialism) and some of the things they have said are totally awesome.

I have been using the book "Hungry Planet - What the World Eats" by Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio. If you haven't had a chance to check out this book, I would highly recommend it, as well as the book photographed a few years earlier, "Material World" by the same authors.

from Material World, Kuwait

from Hungry Planet, Bhutan

In Material World, which was inspired by Madonna's song, "Material Girl," Menzel and D'Aluisio photographed families with all of their possessions outside of the family's house. Hungry Planet was written a few years later and was inspired by Menzel watching a refugee child in Somalia downing some dry Top Ramen while the refugee's younger brother ate the seasoning packet. He was struck by how a convenience food in the west is also eaten in other continents but in such a different way, and decided to do a book where a family's food consumption for a week was tracked. In both books, families that were "statistically average" were chosen to represent the various countries.

both from Hungry Planet, top- Darfur refugees, bottom- North Carolina

These books are fantastic to visually show globalization, consumerism, consumption, and materialism. The kids get those concepts after seeing these books and I love seeing how they start pulling out and identifying items that have gone global and how they start applying that knowledge to the concepts of consumerism and materialism.

Hungry Planet, Japan

I love weeks like this, when the kids actually GET a concept that I am trying to teach, and not only get it but apply it and debate about it. Not only that, they asked questions that allowed me to guide them into discussions about processed vs real food, chemical additives, and why processed food is cheaper than unprocessed food here in the US. It has been one of those weeks when I have actually felt like they are taking something away that they might actually use.

from Material World, top - Japan, bottom - Russia

Teacher Appreciation Week - Sarah Stacy

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it below this post. Just for kicks and giggles, use your teacher’s name as your link! Then….go visit! Spread the love!


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I was lucky in so many ways with my college education and the job hunt that came at the end of that education. I ended up getting a job at a large (5A) public school in a suburb of Dallas, Texas. This particular district had a week-long new teacher program that was held partially at the district, but mostly on the grounds of your home school. And one of the first things that happened as a new teacher was that you were matched up with a mentor teacher. My mentor teacher was Ms. Stacy. Sarah was a tall blond with a quick smile a down-to-earth personality, and a slightly twisted sense of humor that I was instantly drawn to. She was only a few years older than I, and we had a lot in common.

Sarah was my rock during that first year of teaching. On the days when I questioned whether or not I had wasted the previous five years of school and on the days when I cried, Sarah was there to figuratively hold my hand and get me through….and that crying thing? Yeah, that happened a lot. I'm kind of high-maintenance.

She gave me ideas, taught me about the school culture, taught me how to use (and unjam) the copier, gave me a place to eat lunch, someone to bounce ideas off of, and a shoulder to lean on. She told me how to find (and keep) a good desk chair, steered me away from the negative nellies in our department, and gave me her cell phone number. Sarah is one of the most open and friendly people I have ever met, and for the two years she was at the school with me, she was one of the most consistently hard-working teachers I have ever worked with.

Sarah taught world history and an AP world history class for the first time that year, got engaged, married, and pregnant during those first two years, took care of me and 150 high-maintenance sophomores, and still maintained her poise and grace every single day. The district I am in now does not have a particularly good mentor program and I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for those teachers without someone like Sarah there to keep them from gouging their own eyes out and running screaming from the building.

Sarah and I have stayed friends, despite the fact that she was only at my school for two years, and while I have told her before how awesome I think she is, it never hurts to hear it more than once. She has just recently returned to teaching after a break to start a family, and is doing something totally different (elementary school computers), but I am sure she is knocking it out of the park once again.

So here’s to Sarah….the model mentor!

Teacher Appreciation Week - Beth Hamaty

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week! And in honor of that, let’s give something back to those awesome teachers that we’ve all had. In an era of increasing negativity towards this profession, let’s take the time to honor those teachers who have influenced us – past or present, instructors or colleagues, whoever! Post something on your blog, then link to it below this post. Just for kicks and giggles, use your teacher’s name as your link! Then....go visit! Spread the love!

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Ms. Hamaty taught sophomore world history, and I learned pretty much everything I know from her. I was in a decent teaching program at my university, but like most teaching programs at any university in the world, education classes were taught by professors who hadn’t ever been in a public elementary or secondary school, or at best, hadn’t been in a non-college classroom for at least twenty years. One thing my university did well however, was to make sure you got plenty of classroom observations in. Starting two years before I graduated, I spent at least part of every semester in a classroom, multiple times a week. At first, I just did observations. Then some practice lessons, then long-term observations (in the same classroom for several hours a week), and finally, full-time student teaching for a semester in two different placements.

I was lucky enough to be matched with Ms. Hamaty on one of those early rounds, and after that point I asked to be matched with her whenever we had observations to do. I wasn’t an expert, but I recognized one when I saw one. Abilene High was a fairly large school with a pretty mixed population, although it definitely leaned towards the lower end of the income ladder. Looking back, it was a pretty average mid public school for a city of that size, but for me, it was a total immersing shock to my system. I went to a small town public school for the first three years, and a small private Christian school until I graduated, then a mid-sized Christian university after that, so I had never really gone to school with kids who were ethnically different than I, or who came from homes that weren’t stable, or whose parents didn’t always have money to put food on the table. All of a sudden, there I was, surrounded by all of these new people who weren’t like me, and it was surprisingly invigorating. From pretty much the first day I walked into that school, I knew that I had made the right decision about becoming a teacher and that this was the Thing I Wanted To Do.

Ms. Hamaty made that happen. She told me all the things they don’t tell you in teacher education classes. It was from her that I learned when to confront a student head on, and how to avert a problem with humor or teasing. She taught me how to tell stories and how to captivate a class of teenagers with a lecture and notes. She taught me that knowing a kid’s background is important, because sometimes when a kid is sleeping in class, it is because he has to work the swing shift to support his family. She taught me how to control a classroom with a look – the look of death, I like to call it – and taught me how to seize the teachable moments.

I worked with Ms. Hamaty off and on for over a year and her expertise made my first year of teaching possible. What is more, as I have been teaching, I now understand just how difficult it is to have a student teacher in your classroom and yet she was patient with me, answering all of my questions, and allowing me to teach her kids, in her classroom, my way. I wouldn’t be here without her. So thanks, Ms. Hamaty, you are still the teacher I look up to more than any other and I can never thank you enough for what you gave me.

An Open Letter to My Beautiful Students

Today I saw your souls - raw and aching - as you found out about the shooting last night of the 12 year old brother of one of your own. I saw you surround him and grieve with him, pray with him and cry with him, and I was once again thankful that you have allowed me to be a part of your amazing community.

This week was Multicultural Week, a celebration of our uniqueness and the strengths we have together. You put together an incredible show, 22 acts that amaze and astound those of us who watch you. I watched you patiently teach the freshmen how to do the intricate dances, enthusiastically applaud even the performers you didn't know, and defuse potential tension with kind words instead of harsh ones. I saw you blossom as you realized that you can do things that others are in awe of and that your differences are indeed special.

And then, when you found out what had happened, it was your suggestion to change the focus of tonight's show to a benefit performance, you wrote and rehearsed a new song to start the show, you organized a candle-light vigil, and you made it all happen in one day.

I don't know why this happened, and I don't know how to make you feel better, but I wanted to let you know how much I hurt for you, and how much I wish you didn't have to deal with these things. I would tell you that it will get less painful eventually, but I know you aren't ready to hear that, and unfortunately, while the pain will lessen, it will never entirely go away. You will never be as innocent as you were yesterday and my heart breaks for you. I am amazed by your resiliency and I would help you carry this burden if I could.

Love,
Miss Dark Side

Virtual Roses

Besides the obvious fabulosity of it being Friday, I got a few virtual roses today that made me feel kind of neat.

• my principal (and some other district people) met with the Somali organization I tutor with (for a different reason - long story), and in his words, they think I'm "pretty awesome."
• I got my post-observation report from my observing principal today and it is detailed, quite complimentary, and she told me that she thinks I do a great job
• one of my students that freezes while taking tests, but is really quite smart, came in after school for the specific purpose of telling me that she likes history for the first time in her life

These three small compliments will seriously make my entire week and carry me through to spring break. Tiny little virtual roses that mean so incredibly much to any teacher (or really, any person) - the thought that you are being appreciated.

Which brings me to the future. Teacher Appreciation Week is coming up the first week in May, and I would love to host a blog party...maybe doing something along the lines of what I did last year? If you don't read this blog regularly, or if you are new here, last year I had a week's worth of posts in which I talked about my favorite teachers from elementary to high school and thanked them. What do you think? Would anyone else be interested in doing this and all linking to each other? It gives us some time to think about it and plan for it

I'd love it if you joined!

Paging Captain Obvious

Sorry for the lack of posts, my kids kindly gave me their latest disease and I have been recovering all week. So nice of them.....

Anyway, as I was browsing though CNN.com today during my prep, I saw this article from Time that caught my attention. The title of the article?

"Does Puberty Make You Stupid?"

Well, Captain Obvious, I'm gonna have to go with a big fat yes on this one.....

Although apparently it has now been proven by science. And mice.

The Business of Schools

I am privileged to eat lunch daily with an amazing group of people consisting of the majority of the language arts and social studies departments at my school. There are about 10 of us that consistently eat lunch together and while lunchtime topics vary (the Bachelor is a weekly discussion - although not from me - and we've been known to have heated discussions regarding proper grammer or what was on NPR on the way to school that morning) the discussion today naturally focused on the Rhode Island Central Falls High School, where most of the teachers and administration (88 total staff) were fired quite publicly by the school board.

This topic has been discussed enough in other places online, so I will not go into it here, except to say that there is probably quite a lot that is not being reported and that this move was part of a federal program that I think has extremely negative possibilities, called the Race to the Top.

However, as part of that lunchtime discussion, one of the other lunch people mentioned an article written by a Seattle teacher named Kathy Saxon. I don't know Ms. Saxon, but after reading the article, which I've linked to below, I'd certainly like to. She seems to know what she's talking about and says it articulately and exactly the way I'd like to say it. Let me state first that I am not opposed to changing the way I teach. I want to grow as a teacher and I want to be better at my job. I am very much aware of the fact that there are bad teachers, just as there are bad employees in ANY field and I fully support getting rid of those teachers, especially in high-need districts.

However, one of the things that seems to have been a target of the federal government lately is the idea that if a student is not successful, it is totally the fault of the teachers. Let's do some math, shall we? I only see my kids for 50 minutes a day, for 181 days TOTAL, if they are at school every day. That means I directly influence them for 9,050 minutes at the most. By the time they reach me (around age 16), they have been alive for approximately 8.5 million minutes - and shockingly, most of those minutes do not take place in a school environment. It's almost as if things like hunger, poverty, abuse and dysfunction have negatively impacted them.

I know that there are many people that have managed to bring themselves out of horrendous homelives, and become successful, but there's a reason that those people make the news when they do so. It is rare. Just like out of the millions of aspiring athletes and artists, it's rare to be an professional athlete or musician. There is a reason that low-performing schools are located in low-income areas. It's not the schools creating the low income, it's the low income areas creating the schools.

I know from personal experience that working in a low-income area is hard. It's much more difficult than working in a higher income area. The easy way out is to quit. To go to a school where the kids don't cuss you out for bumping into them in the hallway, where there aren't metal detectors at the door, and where most of the kids speak English. Teachers that stay in those low-income areas are generally speaking extremely dedicated, and incredibly invested in the success of their students. The stories I hear break my heart on a regular basis. I have multiple students that have spent time in jail, and I only teach sophomores. When there is a news story about a drive-by shooting or a gang murder, I know that the chances are better than good that one of my kids knows the people involved or was personally involved themselves. These are my kids. I teach here because I want to, and not because I'm lazy.

In her article, Kathy Saxon is talking specifically about merit pay, but I feel that it applies to so many topics in education. I can't directly quote her since I don't have her permission, but I would strongly encourage you to read the article. It is short but extremely well written and perfectly sums up why so many teachers are resistant to the programs being proposed at the federal level.

Go here to read the article

The Smell of Special College

One of the classes I have twice a week is my advisory class. It is a class of twenty kids that I have had since they were freshmen. They are now juniors and we are trying to prepare them to launch themselves on the unsuspecting universe in about 17 months. One of their projects was to research two universities to find out things like tuition, entrance requirements, etc.

Each of my students was allowed to choose whatever 2 colleges they wanted, as long as at least one college was out of state. One of the kids in my class (I'll call him Randy), asked to do his research on technical or motorcycle repair colleges. He is a student that has very low grades, but always knows better than everyone else about everything, and he has a girlfriend I call Vampira because of her habit of leaving suck marks on his neck - 3 or 4 at a time on any given day.

Randy actually worked on his college research pretty well and did his presentation today during class. His second slide was a list of classes offered at this college, called Oaksterdam University.

And that's the moment I realized that he was doing a college presentation on a college devoted to MARIJUANA.

Thaaaaat's right, folks, this is a college dedicated to the "cannabis industry," according to their byline on the website. Classes include the following (my commentary in parentheses):

• Horticulture (how to grow marijuana)
• THREE different "methods of ingestion" classes (so.....a class on how to smoke a doobie?)
• Advanced Grow (how to grow....bigger pot plants??)
• Cannabusiness - YES that is the real name of the class!!!!! - (apparently, how to legally sell marijuana?)

There are about 15 different classes offered, but no worries, the standards are pretty low. There are no regular degrees offered, but you CAN get a get a Certificate of Attendance just for attending all your classes. If you want a higher degree? Well....you can get a Certificate of Completion WITH HONORS for attending all your classes AND doing your homework.

I can only imagine the homework assignments.

Meanwhile, Randy is giving his presentation and I interrupted him to ask, "are you seriously doinig a presentation on a pot college???" and his response was "yes! It's a growing industry!" at which point I just lost it.

The saddest part of all......I don't think his grades are good enough to get in.

The Unwelcome and Unloved

I have been struggling to write lately...the Thing that has been happening in our family consumes my thoughts a lot and is providing a fairly solid writer's block that is proving difficult to get past. In addition, compared to last year's class, this year's sophomores are fantastic. I don't really have the caliber of stories that I did last year. And I am NOT complaining about that, just saying that I don't have as much blog fodder or angst to get rid of as I did last year.

Speaking of last year's sophomores, I have some returners...(insert very tiny and completely fake cheer here), including one of my 5 Annoyances from last year's Infamous 6th period. When I saw his name on my roll, I have to admit I got a knot in my stomach. He is enrolled in my 6th period again, and while I do like this 6th period about 87% better than last year's 6th period, it is still my most challenging class of the day. I had high hopes, since the word from his US history teacher was that he had grown up a little bit. But within 30 minutes of being in my class, he was already one warning away from being kicked out.

When I have a kid like this, I doubt my abilities as a teacher. I have a tenuous hold on that class as it is and while he deserves as good an education as the next kid, at what point does his disrupton become unfair to the rest of the class? At what point am I "justified" in having him removed? Does that point ever arrive? And why is it that some kids have the ability to make me doubt my abilities?

I will freely admit that I am carrying some baggage from last year with this particular kid, but I am trying to give him a fair chance, while still cutting him off at the pass. I want him to know that I am not going to put up with what he did in my class last year. So....we'll see.

We're halfway through the school year!

Irritations

This has been a great year, school-wise. I love these kids and things are really going well. However, there have been a few things that are just....irritating. Call them "teacher peeves:"

• ...when a student misses a day of school, does not make up their work, then on the test day, comes up to my desk and says "I wasn't here for this"
• ...when a student uses a cell phone during my class, and when asked to give it up (until the end of class!!), obviously passes me a completely different phone - and how do I know this? Because I've been picking up his phone most days for the last 2 weeks.
• ...when a student tells me that I cannot call home because he won't be allowed back in the house if he gets in trouble - and then I find out that what that means is that he will have to confess to sneaking his phone out of the house when he was restricted from using it at all (caring parents?? SHOCKING.)
• ...when my students don't just deal with their failures and move on - whether it is a cell phone being picked up, or lying to me and being caught, or being in complete denial about an uncompleted test.

This has all happened, with one student, over the last two days. He is normally a pretty great kid, a sweetheart, a generally hard worker, but over the last few months (since football ended) his grades have slipped and he is having trouble staying focused during class.

We had an IEP/ parent meeting yesterday and the entire way through the meeting he kept trying to make excuses and corrections. I said, "he didn't finish his test, he only did 2 of the questions" and his response was "no, I did almost the entire thing!" I said, "you need to start being responsible for yourself when you scew up" and he said "but that wasn't my fault!"

I don't know how to make this kid understand that he is not acting like an adult...and at this point, he's not even acting like he's 16.

Really, it's closer to 6.

It's My Birthday, I'll Party the Way I Want To

I still haven't touched that pile of grading...and I certainly won't today, because no matter how old you get, you still want to do something fun on your birthday.

I'll save it for New Year's Eve.

While I was home this past week, my dad was talking about the daughters of one of his closest friends. This particular girl is dealing with something that a lot of teenagers deal with, and I know I did as well....popularity - or in my case, the lack thereof.

High school can be a great time. It can be a place where you find yourself, the place where you develop from being the person reflecting your parents belief system to the person who has their own belief system, however roughly thought out it may be. It can be a place where you find out you have a talent for music, or art, or sports. It can be a place of safety from a stormy home life or a place of escape from parents who don't understand anything about how hard being a teenager really is.

But high school is only like that for some people. Some people have glorious high school lives, replete with friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, parties, football games, homecomings, dances, great classes, awesome teachers, cool parents, and perfect hair/skin/teeth/clothes/nails. The rest of us struggle to find a place to fit. As a teacher, I realize just how many kids truly don't FEEL like they fit in, despite the appearance they present to other kids.

When you are in high school, people tell you that this is the best time of your life - no bills, no job, no responsibilities to speak of.
When you are in high school, life is a daily battlefield with countless mines strewn in your path.

Whatever your perspective, whether you love or dread school, you can't imagine life after high school. In my case, I had gone to school with the same kids from the time I began 3rd grade. I didn't believe that I would ever outgrow my high school friends. Life sort of stretched out in front of me, vague and hazy, but following a prescribed pattern - graduation, college, good-paying job, marriage, babies, etc.

Then, you leave high school.

Life begins to take some unexpected turns. Some of those turns are welcome (hello my own apartment!!) and some not-so-much (paying for unexpected surgeries) and then one day, you realize that you live in a new city, you have new friends, and you don't have so much in common with those people you grew up with. You've changed, they've changed, and while home and high school reunions are nice places to go back to occasionally, you don't want to stay there for long.

So to those kids who hate high school, and those who think this is the best time of your life, I say wait. Just wait.

Bad Decisions

Last year, one of my girls, I'll call her Lola, had a rough year. Like many other freshmen, she had a pretty difficult transition from junior high into high school. She failed most of her classes and got in trouble quite a lot.

This year, when she started in my class, she informed me she was going to work hard and pass all her classes this year. And for the first month, she did. Then....she started to slide. She started skipping classes again, not bringing her supplies to class, trying to sleep during class, and not turning in her assignments. I emailed her dad a few times, talked to her, talked to her other teachers, and no one really knew what to do. She claimed that everything was fine and everything was under control.

Last week, on Wednesday, we had a split class - 50 minutes of class, then lunch, then 50 more minutes of class. The first half of class, she did nothing except the one question on the quiz we did together. She went to lunch, and when she came back in, she had some apple slices in her hands - which she threw at another kid - and about 5 minutes after class restarted, she asked to go to the nurse because her stomach hurt. I said fine, whatever, since it was clear she wasn't going to do any work anyway. Towards the end of the period, I emailed the nurse to ask if she made it down there. The nurse said, sure, Lola came down, laid down for about 15 minutes, then when the bell rang for 2nd lunch, she went to lunch.

I have to confess....I was a little bit gleeful. One of the things I do revel in - just a little - is catching a kid in a bold-faced lie. So, I wrote Lola a referral and asked Principal Marshmallow specifically to deal with it that day. After school, I asked him what had happened, and he told me that she told him she hadn't been able to eat lunch that day, so she went to 2nd lunch...and he was ok with that.

I was NOT ok with that.

Then on Friday, Lola wore a shirt that was......inappropriate, to put it lightly. I will NOT be quoting her shirt here. If I had caught her before the last 30 seconds of class, I would have sent her to the office, but since I caught it so late, I emailed the principal and she got in trouble the next period.

That night, at the basketball game, Lola and a bunch of girls were hanging out in the bathroom drinking (vodka, I am assuming). The woman taking tickets got suspicious when the same bunch of girls kept going in and out and began staggering. The administration found an empty bottle in the trash and a partially full one in her backpack.

All of this resulted in an email yesterday that announced that Miss Lola will be suspended until March. In addition, the previously mentioned Samantha was also suspended for having marijuana in her backpack at the same game....she and her friends smelled so strongly of pot that we could smell them on the floor of the gym while they were up in the stands.

Every day I see these kids make their way through the pitfalls and temptations of high school, and I hope desperately that some of them make it without doing something that will screw them up for the rest of their lives.

3 more days.

Boys vs Girls

I saw this clip on CNN when I was surfing around instead of grading. I thought it was really interesting. What do you think? (Pardon the commercial...blame CNN)

Babies and Tears (2)

The girl from the last post, whom I shall call Samantha, came by the next day and told me that she heard from someone, who heard from someone else, etc, that the Boy asked someone to push her down the stairs to try and get her to miscarry. I told her in no uncertain terms that if he did anything to her that caused the baby to die, he could be charged with murder. She told him, and of course, he got mad, but maybe it will cause him to think twice before he does something stupid and irreversible.

I think that one of the things that makes me so mad about this entire situation (aside from the obvious) is the fact that one of my best and closest friends is struggling with infertility. It breaks my heart to know that she WANTS a baby so desperately, while kids who don't want babies get pregnant left and right. Then on Friday, the woman across the hall from me went to her first ultrasound and found out that her baby had died. It seems so unfair.

I know there is a reason for everything, but sometimes it's really hard to trust.

In Defense of Teenagers (edited)

I get the "teaching questions" a lot. If you are a teacher, you know the ones.....What do you do, where do you teach, holy cow are you crazy, etc. Well, maybe you only get that last one if you confess to voluntarily spending the majority of your living time on earth with volatile, emotionally unpredictable teenagers.

But so help me, I love 'em. And here's some reasons why. On the first day of school, as an introductory exercise, the kids were allowed to interview me for four minutes, and ask me anything they wanted to about my personal life. They took notes on the answers, and then wrote a half page biography of me. These bios were HYSTERICAL. Here are some excerpts:

• She worked for her dad as a tractor (and then I pulled out my mad transformer skillz and morphed back into my human form....)
  She loves tie/tia/tyi/thia food (that would be THAI food)
• She is mixed (race) with uripion and jermin (er....European and German)
• Attended school in Promalice, Oregon (This is really only funny if you live in Oregon, but it should be CORVALLIS)
• No she hasn’t been married so boys don’t let your hopes down (I like this kid!!)
• She likes to travel, so whenever you see her, ask her for souvenirs
• She is at the tender age of 30 (This kid is my favorite now)
• Graduated high school in 1986 (er....at the tender age of 7?)
• But besides all that Miss DarkSide is pretty much like everyone else
• Who is Miss DarkSide? Is she a superhero? (Why yes, yes I am)
• She wanted to be an interior designer because of her intolerance of blank spaces everywhere (Could Not Stop Laughing)
• Her family name is from Schwisterland/Her last name is Swish (Apparently I am related to Nike)
• Miss DarkSide is an independent woman who has high potential.
• She wanted to be an interior designer but failed and became a teacher.
• When I first saw Miss DarkSide I didn’t think much of her (This was HANDS-DOWN my favorite one, by a SpEd student)
• She now lives in Washtention (apparently a combination of Washington and Detention) and then later in the same bio...She likes living in Washtioning better than Organtion (which was also spelled Organ, Orgean, and Origou).

Speaking of spelling, my sister's name was spelle Hidy, Hydi, Hydi, Hiedi, Hidea, Hydie, Hiadie, (and Cathy), and my favorite color was spelled tercoils, tercuose, turquoose, torquoise, torcoil, torquise, turquiste (by the same kid who correctly used and spelled genre), terqose, turcos, turquios, torquoos, and turques. Maybe I should have said my favorite color was pink.

One class asked if I had a criminal record, and when I said no, asked if I had a juvenile record. They seemed disappointed when I said no to that too. That class also asked if I was afraid of bears.

Seriously, how could you NOT love this stuff?