Thanks to a brilliant suggestion by @alvinauh in his very clever post here, this week's @steemiteducation homework assignment is incredibly fun.
The assignment is to describe the wackiest thing that you have ever witnessed (or caused) in a classroom.
This was an extremely challenging assignment for me. Is it because I never do anything wacky in my classroom?
Oh my gosh no.
It is the exact opposite. I am such a goofball that I am constantly creating lifelong memories for my students. Yeah that's what we will call all of my gaffs, screw-ups, and other incredibly embarrassing bloopers. We will call them "lifelong memories".
The reason this assignment was so difficult for me, is that over the span of my 19 year teaching career, I have had many ridiculous things happen in my classroom. I'm pretty sure if I listed them all, no one would believe me. Because it was too difficult to choose which event to describe, I decided the only way to tackle this would be to do so chronologically.
After graduating from college, I applied to many schools. Because there is a shortage of special education teachers, I was fairly confident I would find a job. However, convincing an administrator to take a chance on a new teacher and give them their first shot in the classroom is not an easy thing to do. Like in any field, you often have to aim a little bit lower than your dream job and work your way up. One of my goals was to have a position sewn up before leaving for my honeymoon in July. Therefore, I took the first decent offer presented to me.
That was a mistake. Although I gained valuable experience and enjoyed working with the students, the school was a mess. They actually petitioned the state to cut the school day the following year to the bare minimum: 4 1/2 hours per day. Luckily the community eventually convinced the school not to make the move... but I didn't stick around to find out. I had to start looking for another job.
Surprisingly, my dream job had an opening. I met the head of the Special Education department at a job fair and we hit it off famously. She said the next step in the process was to send in a video tape (yes we still had actual video tapes back then) of me teaching a lesson at my current school.
Back in my day, this camera was considered compact.
No problem.
I figured the physical science class I was teaching would be the perfect place to record a spectacular hands on lesson on the efficiency of simple machines.
After gaining permission to record the class, I set up some brilliant demonstrations (at least to me they were brilliant) of simple machines found around the house. It was quite a while ago so I don't have a perfect recollection of all of the props I used but I know there were window blinds, a pry bar, a chair with wheels... and a potato ricer. I will never forget that damn potato ricer I borrowed from my grandma for this demonstration.
This is how a potato ricer typically works.
The potato ricer was my grand finale. Not only did I think it would look cool, I would get to share a little about my family and our traditional Bohemian food with the students. After a quick story, I took out the ricer and showed it to the students. Then I asked them many brilliant questions in order to get them to figure out what it was and how it was going to make my life easier.
The answers were flying fast and furious. I was on fire! Not only was this a great lesson, it was the GREATEST LESSON IN THE HISTORY OF TIME! Someday, my grandchildren would come and sit on my lap and say, "Grandpa, tell us the story of your perfect lesson again. You're brilliant!" Researchers would want to do government funded studies of the lesson. I would become the first teacher in history to win "Teacher of the Year" in his first year teaching. Have you ever heard of Jaime Escalante? Confucius? Aristotle? Morons! All morons compared to me and my brilliance.
I'd like to thank all of the little people...
And I had it all on video! I just needed to nail the grand finale and accept my prize.
I took a potato, dropped it into the potato ricer, and I squeezed.
Nothing.
I squeezed again.
Nothing again.
I squeezed harder.
Nothing (but I was starting to sweat).
I squeezed as hard as I could.
Snap!
I broke the metal handle (I was lifting weights a lot back then). The jagged edge I created sliced into my forearm. Blood began to pour out. Miraculously I didn't swear. While still teaching, I calmly walked over to the sink, grabbed some paper towels and put pressure on the wound. Within seconds the blood soaked through. But I soldiered on.
A young lady raised her hand.
"Yes Jenny", I said.
"Did you boil the potatoes first?", she asked.
I paused, smiled and said, "I guess we've learned two things today. Machines are awesome and make our lives easier... but they can't make up for human error."
And it was all on video.
I have no idea what possessed me to do this, but instead of creating a new video, I sat down and wrote an explanation of the lesson. I included what I had learned, what I would do differently next time, and one final statement. I wrote:
"If you are looking for a teacher who will use any situation as a teachable moment and believes the show must go on (even while bleeding) I hope you consider hiring me. If not, you are still always welcome at my house for some potato dumplings."
(See I even overused parenthesis back then).
To my and my grandma's amazement (I did have to explain what happened to her ricer) the day after dropping off the tape, the Division Chair called to offer me a job. When she retired three years ago, I presented her with a very special gift...
a potato ricer.