What?? They asked.....

In my profession, I am rarely ever bored; however, I have found myself many times for a loss of words or even dumbfounded.

Over the past ten years of teaching I have been asked so many questions. Many of which I have to wonder if they think before engaging their mouths.

Recently, I had a student ask me to smell her! Seriously? As it turned out she was trying a new lotion, phew!

When I was in college and in my teaching training courses, I had a wonderful lesson planned for a great group of first graders. I had gone a bit overboard in the lesson preparations knowing that the university supervisor and his GA along with a camera where scheduled to be there. I had a classroom teacher and my teaching partner there also to assist in the Money Math lesson. As I was gearing up the lesson, there was a sweet little girl sitting in her desk with her hand raised. I called upon her. "Ms. teacher, what kind of bug is this? It was in my hair."  Oh dear, I would have thought I was on Punked or Candid Camera.

At my first teaching job, I had a second grader ask me what the 'S' was like...errr never mind.

In the middle school grades kids questions can be laced with so many in duos you must handle these questions with a certain dose of caution. Some of my most interesting conversations have been working with those students on the Special needs spectrum... both the high and the lower end. Most recently, I took notice of one 'gifted' student who was asking very obvious and common sense questions because they had 'no clue'.

A second grader at a previous school, once asked me if his eyes were red. When I replied,"No." He informed me that I hadn't made him mad enough yet! He had a HUGE aversion to math and only wanted to read.

My favorite kind of questions are those that seem to come out of the blue! I was enthrall with one particular lessons recently...explaining the ins and outs of a Thesis statement. It was almost lunch time, so I was in a hurry to sum it, when a sweet little fella asked an off the wall question. "Ms.C, I've always wondered how a seed knows which way the roots need to go. How does that work?"...People, I teach Language Arts not sciences, but I responded by telling the young man that would make a fantastic research paper idea!

I love working with enquiring young minds!