Silly silly students

Even though they drive me crazy at times, I really do love my new students. It's so funny how at times they're a completely different animal from the kids in the States, and sometimes I feel like I've teleported back to my classroom at home!

Today in my seventh-grade class, we were doing a quick grammar review challenge. The kids had sentences and they had to determine if the apostrophes in them were used correctly or not.

The third sentence said this: Sandra, could I borrow your note's?

As the kids were working on the exercise, a girl excitedly raised her hand. "Teacher teacher!" --because that's what my students call me, despite two weeks worth of efforts to train them to call me "Mrs. Echols," not "teacher teacher."-- "Teacher, I want to answer when we get to number three! It's a trick."

I was happy to see that she was so eager to participate in class, but I hadn't meant number 3 to be a trick. The answer was pretty much cut-and-dried. So I was curious to see what trick she had caught.

Keep in mind that the assignment only dealt with the words that had apostrophes.

When we got to the sentence about Sandra's notes, my eager little lady happily declared that the correct way to write the sentence was, "Sandra, MAY I borrow your note's?"

The beaming expression of total pride was soo precious! I tried so hard to stifle my laugh as she explained that her English teacher last year would always answer the question "Could I go to the bathroom" with "I don't know...CAN you?"

I praised her for her fine manners and then asked if she noticed anything else wrong with the sentence.

"...no. That is all."

le sigh.

Vicariously yours,