Stupid Questions My Kids Wanted to Ask Me Today

Stupid Questions My Kids Wanted to Ask Me Today

Right now, I am a student teacher at an elementary school, working with 2nd through 5th grade students. I grew up the oldest of 6 children, so I'm very used to having little kids in my life, but being in a position of authority over them is something entirely new to me. Another new sensation is the fact that these students are obsessed with every single detail about my life, and they pretty much think I'm the coolest thing ever. I like that feeling. I don't know why 5th graders couldn't think I was the coolest thing ever when I was actually a 5th grader myself, but oh well. Better late than never.

Today was a pretty standard day. My 5th grade class did extraordinarily well. I got to witness the proverbial "lightbulb above forehead" moment that my old teachers used to talk about so often. "Veinte is twenty, right?" I explained patiently to my fifth graders. "And dos is two, right? So if you have Veinte...dos...veinte y dos...veinte...dos...veintidos..."

"OH!" One of  my girls shrieked, her hand flying up into the air. "Oh, I know! I got it! Twenty and two! Twenty two! Do another one!"

I was so proud. They all figured it out, which is saying something for my kids. 4th grade and 3rd grade followed the same suit, really impressing me with their skills and working hard to prove to me that they could count to 100 in Spanish. I was incredibly pleased by the time I got to 2nd grade.

Kate (the actual teacher of the classroom) and I were super excited for 2nd grade, because we were getting evaluated, and it seemed like the perfect day to do so because all of the kids were doing such a great job. So when the visitor came in with her clipboard, we welcomed her graciously into the room with confident smirks on our faces and prepared to blow her away.

God didn't want us to succeed. That is the only explanation. That is the only reasoning I can come up with for why He would open up the skies so that it started pouring down rain on the second graders as they were walking out to our trailer, causing them to run and sprint and push each other and fall in the mud. Kate and I looked at each other in horror. This was not going as planned. We saw our gleaming evaluation plummeting to the ground like a bullet-ridden fighter jet--I could hear my brain screaming Mayday, mayday! Pilot down! Eject, eject!

"Out of my way!" "Ew you're covered in mud!" "I'm going to throw a mudball at you!" "I'm going to throw a mudball at Ms. Kuzy!"

"THE NEXT PERSON THAT MOVES GETS TO SIT IN ISOLATION!" Kate bellowed. "What has gotten into you? Is that the way we come to my classroom? Control yourselves!" The kids barreled inside, still screaming and pulling hair and ricocheting off of each other until Kate came inside, looked at me with a look that clearly expressed her desire for a quick double suicide for the both of us, clapped her hands and got the kids to be quiet.

Now, the kids' routine is to listen to Kate while she's teaching, and ask me questions if they don't understand something so that Kate doesn't constantly have to interrupt her presentation. I'm used to this, and usually not many kids have questions, so there isn't a lot for me to do. However, almost immediately into Kate's powerpoint, a boy raised his hand. I walked over to him.

"Yes?" I asked. "What do you need?"

"Why are you wearing a dress?"

"That is not an appropriate question for Spanish class," I scolded him. "You need to ask me if you have any Spanish questions."

I walked away and went across the room, where a girl had raised her hand. I was starting to think to myself that there were an awful lot of questions today, when she asked me this:

'What is your mama's name?"

"Really, class!" I whisper-scolded. "This is Spanish class, now pay attention!"

Another girl had her hand raised. I walked over to her.

"Is your boyfriend Tony ever going to visit?" (This spawns from my very first day teaching, when the kids were allowed to ask me personal questions and they asked if I had a boyfriend. I said I did and his name was Tony Stark. Nobody laughed, and that's when I realized I was the dreaded "o-word". (old) )

I walked over to Kate, who had paused to see what was going on, and told her what the problem was. The dilemma was that we were being supervised, and we couldn't act like we weren't going to answer kids' questions or tell them that we weren't going to answer anything else in case one of them actually had a real question. My only option was to go to the students with hands up and hope they had an actual question worth answering.

I walked over to one of the quiet kids with her hand raised.

"Do you think my jacket is pretty?"

I walked to the back of the classroom.

"Would you ever have a pet otter?"

I walked to the corner table.

"Why is your hair so long?"

"ENOUGH!" Kate finally shouted, goaded past endurance. "If anybody has a question about SPANISH CLASS, raise your hand! If you do not, then STAY QUIET!"

All the hands went down except for one. One boy looking at me expectantly. I glanced at Kate and then I walked over to him.

"How do I pronounce this word?" He asked me, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Tray-in-tah", I said clearly for him in Spanish. He copied me, and it was pretty good. I smiled at him. Just when I thought the danger was over...

"Why aren't you wearing any socks?" He said with the most sincerest face.

The bell rang before Kate could dismember him, but that kid should consider himself lucky. All in all, our evaluation day could have gone a little better... maybe. Oh, what the hell. I'm learning not to let my expectations get too high of a bunch of 7 year olds. I think the fact that we kept them from throwing mudballs at the evaluator should have earned us an automatic pass, or however they grade those things.

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I mentioned above that on my first day, the kids were allowed to ask me personal questions to "get to know me". Here are a few of the better ones.

"Do you live in a mansion?"

"Our teacher said her boyfriend is Harry Potter. Is she lying?" (I answered no, I saw them on a date.) "HARRY POTTER IS REAL!"

"Do you like kids? Do you like to eat them?"

"Are you going to have a baby? (I answer "possibly in the future") What does that mean? (It means later) Oh, that means later... are you going to have one tomorrow?"

"Did you ever eat a dog?"

"Are you a genius?"

"How old are you?" (I tell them to guess) "Fourteen?" (another kid interjects) "No stupid, she's fifty!"

"Will you and Tony get married? When? Why can't you get married now?" (I responded that his job got in the way) "Tell him to quit his job and marry you!" (I said he can't do that. The world depends on it. Kate was dying laughing in a corner.)

"What's your favorite food that is NOT dog?"

"Have you ever seen someone die? Have you ever killed someone?"

"Do you think blood is gross?"

"Would you eat a worm for a dare?"

That last question ended the Q&A forum.