High Schoolers Say (and Do) the Dumbest Things

I am constantly amazed at some of the things that happen in my class. Some of them make me laugh, others make me cringe, and sometimes I just shake my head at the realization that some people are just dumb.

I have a Mexican in my class who speaks Spanish fluently. On the first day of class I asked him why he was taking Spanish if he already knew how to speak it. He said, "I just want an easy B." What ambition I thought. He currently has one of the lowest grades in the class.

A kid in one of my classes has pretty long hair and is the "tough kid" type. Last Friday he got a haircut and when he came into class he just look plain weird and I couldn't figure out why. I finally figured out that it was his eyebrows that looked weird. I asked, "Are your eyebrows drawn on?" and he replied with a resounding no. A well spoken girl next to me said, "Mr. Schilaty's right, they do look drawn on." He was a little annoyed at this point. The girl and I both leaned in for a closer look and we realized that his eyebrows hadn't been drawn on, but they had been shaped. Not the kind of thing I would have expected from a tough kid as they made him look a little feminine.

One of my other students had my brother as a basketball coach. He thinks that Jessen and I are pretty cool. Since he thinks I'm cool he also thinks that we're friends and that he can get away with anything in my class. Not true. He used to call my brother "Big Daddy Schilaty" and asked if he could call me "Pimp Daddy Schilaty." He was really surprised and perplexed when I said that he could not and that such a title was offense. Today in the middle of class he asked me how far I'd gone with a girl. I was floored. How could he be so inappropriate and disruptive at the same time? I quickly shut him and said that that was a ridiculously inappropriate question and we later had a little chat about propriety and respecting women.

On a happy note, I have a girl in my sixth period who sometimes hangs around for a few minutes after school to help me clean up. We've talked about religion quite a lot (it's okay after school) and she has some pretty weird ideas. Last week we had a discussion about how delicious curry is. The next day she told me that she thinks that all Mormons must love curry because she had run into two missionaries that day who had also mentioned that they love curry. She's a good student, but she often reads during class. Today I caught her reading the Book of Mormon. I said, "I'm glad that you're reading that, but you can't do it during class." Apparently the missionaries have started teaching her family. That makes me happy.