The Schilatypus

In my fourth period class some of my students believe that I can hear everything that's being said in the room. It's not true, although I wish it were. One girl in particular gets really peeved when I comment on what she's saying to her friends or tell her that what she's saying is inappropriate. My ability to hear what's going on has little to do with my ears and a lot to do with the stupidity of high schoolers. When they want to say something private to their neighbor they will often hold up a piece of paper or put their hand in front of their mouth. I've told them many times that hands and paper do very little, if anything, to muffle sound. Yet they still get annoyed when I can hear them.

A few days ago I had given the kids an assignment to work on and I was doing something at my desk. All of a sudden I heard one of the kids say something about crack and something sexual. I immediately said that that was inappropriate and that he needed to stop. As soon as I said that half the class started laughing. Now, if there's one thing I've learned as a teacher it's that it is really bad if everyone is laughing and you have no idea why. It was quickly explained to me that they had made a beat to see how quickly I would stop the conversation and they had started laughing because I had stopped it much sooner than expected. Apparently my ears lived up to their reputation.

Last week I heard another conversation coming from the nether regions of my classroom. All I heard was, "....BYU t-shirt...." and I said, "What did you say about BYU?" I worked my way over to the group of students that I had overheard and they promised that they were behaving. I let them continue what they were doing and a few minutes later they unveiled the Schilatypus. The conversation I had overheard was them discussing if the Schilatypus should wear a BYU t-shirt. The students were pretty pleased with their creation and are hoping to make an entire Schilaty zoo that could include such animals the Schiliger and the Schiloctypus.