A Good Class is a Goofy Class

Last week began to remind of teaching for real, not because of any particular subject matter, but because of the absolute goofiness that cropped up in a couple of classes.  I guess it was a matter of comfort--teacher to students--as anything else.

We're talking about waves in 8th grade science right now.  Our working definition is, "A wave is the propagation of energy through a medium."  Amplitude and frequency are both measurements for how much energy is being propagated.  We talked about how this is why your ipod runs out of batteries faster at a higher volume.  We also talked about higher frequencies--for audio waves, this means higher pitch--indicating higher energy consumption (disregarding the energy required to drive the speakers) and someone said, "I knew it!  Justin Bieber does destroy ipods!"

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I don't remember the discussion that brought up the '80's, but one boy concurred with the general concensus: "Yeah, the '80's was a real bad year!"  When the class all turned dumbfoundedly to stare at him, he corrected himself: "I mean, it was a real century, I mean week, I mean," and he struggled a moment before finally recognizing it as "time."

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girl: "Every time I think of Mr. Center, I think of a centipede for some reason."

boy: "What, like Mr. Centerpede?"

Mr. Center: "At least once a day."

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