Why sometimes teaching is hysterically funny

Collected from the last several weeks, here is an assortment of exchanges with my high school students.

Today, one of my students, who is black, had just spent twenty minutes sitting in a classroom while an ESL class of Vietnamese students gave presentations on famous civil rights leaders. He speaks very deliberately, and knows he is hysterically funny.

"So they're talking about Martin Luther King," he tells me. "Only I can't understand what they're saying, because they sound like 'Mah-tin Loo-teh King Joon-ya' and then one of them asks me if Martin Luther King ate a lot of fried chicken. And you're laughing Ms. Andersen, but they didn't ask you, they asked me, and I didn't laugh because that would have been rude. And they wouldn't have asked you, because you're white. But I know all about Martin Luther King. And fried chicken. Obviously."

And also today, we were reading an article that used the word "macro." So, we explained what the word "macro" means.

Me: "Macro" means "big."

My student: So what do "roni" mean?

He explained further: "I was thinking like, if 'macro' mean big, then maybe macaroni means like, 'big cheese noodle.'"

This is the same kid, who last week was suddenly awestruck by the fact that we live on a planet. "I'm tellin you, we're living on a PLANET. Like, we're living on top of a rock with water and dirt on it. Planet earth, man. And you think like, we're just a speck of dust in the whole picture, like I bet we're like a speck of dust in an alien's closet. One of these days someone's just gonna blow dry us out the way!"

Later in that conversation, he comes out with...

Student: So if you get all that money, you gonna be comin' in here and make it precipitate?

Cliff, my co-teacher: What?

Student: You know, makin' it rain?

They're so smart! I love my kids.

In addition to commenting on my eyes (which happens with some regularity, for some reason) my kids will also comment on how small I am ("Ms. Andersen, you look just like a little kid!"), or on how long my hair is (today, for instance, I was asked if my hair had grown, because it was "looking pretty long.") These are at least relatively reasonable things to notice, I guess. Last week though, one of my kids looks at me and makes the following observation: "Ms. Andersen, you look like you was outside this morning selling lemonade or something."

Moral of the story, little kids say super cute things that make you swoon with their adorableness. High schoolers just say the absolutely most ridiculous things you've ever heard - and I love it. Not to say my job isn't really hard sometimes. And not to say it isn't stressful, and there isn't a lot of pressure, and a lot isn't at stake for these kids. But sometimes all I can do is stand there laughing hysterically. Because I love my kids, and they are some of the damn funniest people I've ever met.