Sirens of Science

i've started noticing something in my classes. girls are dotting their i's with hearts, writing about how much they love tony, and have in a oh-so-subtle way stopped being as verbal as usual. not that they aren't chatty in general, they just don't raise their hands as much to talk or answer questions. being cute and talking to boys is starting to become rather important, and being the smart girl isn't necessarily so awesome anymore. it's really weird and hard to observe as a woman who WAS that girl that didn't care about being smarter than the boys. yes, glad i didn't quiet down, but i also know that it can make you the least favorite/most grossest girl during a time when being accepted is everything. SO, i am going to try to work my smart ladies through all this. or at least give them a place to express their concerns and frustrations and drink tea. i have started the "sirens of science" club that is going to meet every wednesday after school. it's girls-only and we talk about girl-type stuff. it was a pretty interesting thing to dismiss the boys from class and then tell only the girls in each class that i get what happens in 8th grade and it's a totally weird time where being a smart girl can make you be not so cute or desirable. i assured them at "sirens" we're not going to sit around talking about periods or vaginas, unless they want to. and yes... when one group of boys asked what was going on and why they weren't invited to the party i told them we were all talking about vaginas. and i think every single one of those boys got an erection. and they were incredibly quiet for the first 15 minutes of class and stared even harder at my boobs. so hard.

i also made kids apologize today when they laughed at a student for giving the wrong answer to a question. made me so mad. they laughed, i scolded, then the class continued, then i stopped because i was still mad and felt terrible and made them say they were sorry to the kid they laughed at. they laughed at soren. he spelled nickel wrong. big fucking deal. i then made the kid who laughed at him spell every single chemical name on the quiz. out loud. phosphorus, calcium, titanium, fluorine. sucker.

bettie... oh bettie

bettie. bettie. bettie.

emo gases

i didn't think i'd ever be explaining shoegazing to my students, but there i was doing it today. i was introducing students to the different groups in the periodic table (alkalis, alkaline earth metals, halogens, noble gases) and was explaining how stable noble gases are because they have full valence shells. so full, in fact, that they have no motivation to hang out with any other elements because they are quite content with the electrons they have. i then heard one of my students say "oh, so they're like emo then." holy. cow. yes... yes noble gases are totally emo. i think my response was something like "well, it's not like they listen to death cab for cutie or anything, but yes, you could think of them as emo. or shoegazers." my students had no idea what that meant, so of course i demonstrated and they laughed like maniacs. cus shoegazing is ridiculous. and then ol' jermone asked whether opening fire at an emo concert would be the best thing for a serial killer to do. because all the emo kids would be staring at their shoes and not paying attention to what's going on. how do you answer that? i told him to not start getting ideas and finish coloring in his alkali metals.

shoegazing electron hogs.

hardcore electrons

today we talked about valence electrons. i explained that valence electrons are those electrons that are found in the outermost energy level of an atom. any electrons that are not valence electrons are called "core" electrons. i then said, "but, if you're an electron that listens to municipal waste, you're what we call a hardcore electron." i then started laughing super hard and looked at my class. they weren't laughing. at all. someone said "is that a band?," and someone else yelled "of course it's a band." yes. yes it's a band. and they're going to fuck you up.

slut bag electrons

today i called valence electrons "slutty." actually, i think i used the term "slut bags" and then remarked that i should be fired. every day.

and it appears as though the parents from hell have again risen from their pampered graves. there's one really special one that appears to have an excessive amount of free time on her hands and likes to send me four page emails. four page emails about how the science fair projects last year were 90% "dribble" (reminder: these kids are 12 and under), how demoralizing i am, how i have caused irreparable damage to her daughter and other children, how my standards are not high enough and she has established her own set of guidelines for her daughter to follow for the science fair (and is going to cause her daughter to bomb this project cus she has no idea what she is doing), and how she needs to stop her email message because she needs to dry the tears from her daughter's face, a daughter who apparently has never shed a fucking tear until she met me. me, the evil, evil science teacher who likes to take children's dreams and crush them under her stylish boots. crush them and then turn them into fertilizer for the garden where i plant and nourish the hopes and wishes of even more children, only then later to tear them out by whatever roots they may have established and feed them to packs of dogs that i have ripped the teeth out of. they mash these prematurely destroyed dreams between their gumless jaws and turn them into a paste of pain. a paste of pain that i lather on my veggie burgers and eat after long days of sucking the souls out of pre-teens. and did i mention that these dogs had dreams of their own? dreams of being winners at westminster. yeah? well, fuck you dogs. shi-tzus, pomeranians, i don't give a fuck. i'm a dream destroyer.

666

today i told a class "your jesus is my devil." what i had intended on saying was "one man's devil is another man's jesus"... but it didn't come out that way. and how did we get there? the atomic number of carbon is 6. it has 6 protons. it can also have 6 neutrons. 666. take it from there..

switzerland is for suckers

today i gave my students their first atomic structure lesson. i was going through the parts of the atom and the charges associated with each. so protons are "pro" meaning positive... and then electrons are negative and are in the electron cloud.. and then there's neutrons, which are neutral like switzerland, meaning they don't have any charge. i say this in one of my classes and hear zach (the smoke machine kid/one who got thrown to the ground earlier in the year) mumble "yeah right, like switzerland is neutral." SO AWESOME. twelve and apparently has beef with the swiss.