Month: May 2026

Overheard

There are only a few more weeks of school, and students are forgetting to use their “inside the head” voices when I’m nearby. I suppose I’m doing the same, but as far as I can tell no one is paying attention to what I say anymore – even when they should. Here are a few recent gems from my classes:

“Honestly, I hate all the characters in Hamlet. They’re either misogynist or helpless or stupid or all three of those things.”

“Hamlet’s got lowkey aura. He was cold when he killed that old dude. Just kept on yelling at his mom.” (I may have some of the adjectives in the wrong order here.)

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seriously bad friends.”

“How could you leave Fortinbras out? Like… the play just ends and no one is in charge of Denmark?” 

“Miss, don’t tell anyone, but Senior Skip Day is next Friday.”
“Why didn’t you plan anything for Friday? Oh! Right! We forgot to tell you. We moved Skip Day because it’s going to rain.”
“Um, actually, we might move it back if the weather is good. Can you just watch the forecast?”
“You’ll be ok either way, right? Like, you obviously know how to teach, so if we come you’ll think of something – but we’ll try to tell you ahead of time.”

“How is ‘time’ not a countable noun?”

“You can count bread. What are you even talking about?”

“What do you mean you can’t count money? You can obviously count money.” (I try to explain the difference between physically counting money and money being an uncountable noun.) “This doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Wait, there are rules for less and fewer? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

“Honestly, Miss, capital letters are old school. I don’t think people really use them anymore.”

“A core-what?” (I explain what a corsage is.) “I think that’s not a thing anymore.” 
I ask the girls in grade 12 English. They are certain it is still a thing.
“Yeah, you have to give her a corsage, and she gives you a button ear.”

“A word with the short a sound? Um…asshole.”

“Can you stop telling my parents when I’m late or not here? I feel like I can manage my attendance on my own.”

“Why do you want me here on time so bad?

“What do you mean we have an exam?”

Unexpected knowledge

If you watch a ten-minute news show (CNN10) every morning with your high school Literacy class, at some point your students will probably surprise you with their random bits of knowledge. They might, for example, know exactly where Venezuela is even though they recently mixed up Japan and Jamaica (“They’re both islands, Miss”), or maybe they’ll share a remarkable series of facts about the Apollo 13 mission after Artemis lands safely.

Perhaps, after a spirited class discussion about hantavirus and what it might feel like to be stuck on a ship where hantavirus has killed several passengers, you will say something about how rats initially spread the disease. And maybe, just maybe, a student will perk up in the back corner of the classroom and blurt out, “It could be a capybara.”

Huh?

“Hantavirus is spread by rodents, not just rats, so it could be capybaras. Capybaras are the largest rodents. They can get as big as wolves.”

If you are lucky, you will not spit out your tea as you try to suppress hilarious laughter at the vision of wolf-sized capybaras capering about the cargo hold of a cruise ship. 

If you are very lucky, your student will then pause thoughtfully and add, “but it’s probably rats.”