What’s the most memorable first day of a class you’ve ever had?
August 4, 2023 11:06 AM Subscribe
As an educator preparing for the upcoming school year, I’d like to plan a meaningful and memorable first day back for my students. What notable experiences have you had as either an instructor or a student? For context, I teach high school students.
The first day of my visual arts class in high school, the teacher (a woman) dressed in a fairly masculine-coded way — hair tucked up inside a pageboy cap, t-shirt, loose vest, baggy straight-leg jeans.
The next day, as we walked into class, at first we all thought we had a sub for the day — standing in front of the class was a very feminine-dressed woman — bright red lipstick, hair down and neatly styled, chunky jewelry, cardigan and long flowing dress.
Of course, after a moment we all realized she was the same teacher as yesterday. She went on to make a point about the visual aspect of gender presentation, and how it affects our perception of the people around us. It was a very effective demonstration.
posted by mekily at 11:23 AM on August 4, 2023 [16 favorites]
The next day, as we walked into class, at first we all thought we had a sub for the day — standing in front of the class was a very feminine-dressed woman — bright red lipstick, hair down and neatly styled, chunky jewelry, cardigan and long flowing dress.
Of course, after a moment we all realized she was the same teacher as yesterday. She went on to make a point about the visual aspect of gender presentation, and how it affects our perception of the people around us. It was a very effective demonstration.
posted by mekily at 11:23 AM on August 4, 2023 [16 favorites]
This probably isn't the kind of memorable you're looking for, but out of all the classes I ever took, the only first day of a class I actually remember anything specific about is the first day of AP English my senior year of high school. The teacher handed out copies of The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens and asked us to answer an essay question about it. That was the only thing that happened. We were given the whole class period to write. I don't remember what the question was. It didn't matter, because I didn't understand the poem and had no idea how to say anything about it, so I wrote nothing at all.
I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was. To make even the smart-ass overconfident kids realize they still had a lot to learn? To weed out kids who weren't ready for the class? I certainly didn't feel ready for it after that, but I stayed in the class anyway and it was fine. No else understood the poem either. I ended up liking the class and the teacher and she liked me, too. I was probably her best student that year. And by the end of the year I think I would have been capable of making some sense out of that poem and actually writing about it. Maybe that was the point - to give us a baseline to compare ourselves favorably to at the end.
posted by Redstart at 11:35 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was. To make even the smart-ass overconfident kids realize they still had a lot to learn? To weed out kids who weren't ready for the class? I certainly didn't feel ready for it after that, but I stayed in the class anyway and it was fine. No else understood the poem either. I ended up liking the class and the teacher and she liked me, too. I was probably her best student that year. And by the end of the year I think I would have been capable of making some sense out of that poem and actually writing about it. Maybe that was the point - to give us a baseline to compare ourselves favorably to at the end.
posted by Redstart at 11:35 AM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
My high school physics teacher took an Easter peep candy, hung it with a little floss noose, put it in a bell jar, and pumped all the air out until the peep swelled up and the noose cut its little sugar head off.
… in retrospect high school was weird.
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:59 PM on August 4, 2023 [6 favorites]
… in retrospect high school was weird.
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:59 PM on August 4, 2023 [6 favorites]
Like Redstart I had a similar experience on (I think) the first day of a combined AP English/AP World History class. The teachers presented us with some newspaper op-ed about how stupid Americans are/how bad our education system is because X% couldn't find their own state, or some specific country, on a map, and we were supposed to write an essay about it. Most of us, myself included, wrote something alone the lines of "yeah Americans are dumb aren't they" or whatever, agreeing with the op-ed. One kid wrote an essay questioning the research upon which the original op-ed was based, and he became the golden child of the class for the entire school year. I loathed that class.
posted by jabes at 1:39 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by jabes at 1:39 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Not the first day and not high school, but poetry class freshman year of college the prof noticed that we were bored, so he clambered up on his desk and declaimed Wordsworth. He was a poor climber but a great reader, and he was totally without fear of embarrassment. I made note of the latter condition and later used it in my own teaching career where I'd do things like lose my footing because I was wearing stupid pumps that slid on the highly polished floor and do a John Ritter pratfall in front of the class--not on purpose, but the thing I learned from that poetry professor was that I didn't have to feel embarrassed about it afterwards because I knew how pedagogically valuable one's teacher suddenly becoming a clown can be.
Once I realized in the middle of yacking about it that I didn't really fully understand something we were discussing in a novel or an essay we were reading because I didn't know the geography, so I pulled down the big old-school roll-up map over the chalkboard for the first and last time in my teaching career. I was pointing at the relevant bit of one state or continent with my left hand and at some other state or continent with my right hand, and I needed to indicate some other locale, so I stood on one foot and vaguely waved at the third point on the map with the other foot. The students laughed, whereupon I realized that using one's foot as a pointer was an odd thing to do. But they were paying attention and learning and growing, so there you go: effective pedagogical strategy. Like from the ground up effective: if you don't know, don't try to hide it; there's no shame in not knowing, even if you're the teacher. But do some work to find out if you don't know. Pull down the big map and actually look at it. Take the time to figure it out. And if you're inspired by the quest for knowledge and you do something ridiculous chasing it down...? Well, good for you, that's fine and noble! I felt no embarrassment that time, either, because as I learned from my poetry prof, teaching is in a special, rarified non-embarrassment zone of existence.
Another person who taught me that feeling embarrassed because you're doing something ridiculous in front of students is absolutely optional was my high school guidance counselor, who was this toupee-wearing 40-year-old white guy who was always dressed in head-to-toe polyester and ridiculous wide ties, and he'd stride through the crowded halls of the high school yelling, "Right on! Give me five, brother!" and other decades-old youthspeak slogans from our parents' generation. At the time we all thought, "How witheringly embarrassing for the poor fellow," but of course he knew exactly what he was doing, namely being his actual age and celebrating his actual hilarious personality and his general Les Nesman style sense--and the fact that he knew zero about our generation's fashions and wasn't trying to find out and was feeling no shame about that. He also demonstrated in a very fun way that It Gets Better: later on you will be grown and secure in yourself, and you won't die if you're not wearing the Nike court shoe, white and blue, and the exact right pants and the exact right shirt exactly correctly and saying things in the exact right way for the exact year and hitting every trend exactly perfectly right. In fact, you won't even feel any pain, even if you're doing everything exactly wrong. Because of him I did not ever think I needed to try to pretend to be a youth culture native to communicate effectively with the youth, and that it was fine for them to know much, much more than I knew about the things they know, and that it's good to let them be experts in the things they're expert in and to learn from them.
...
I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was.
If it were community college and not high school, I'd say totally a weed-out move. IOW, maybe it was a cynical and cruel and probably pretty effective effort to reduce the size of the class and the teaching load as painlessly as possible. Could you have dropped and signed up for an easier class? Because if so... Okay, full disclosure: I did this kind of thing on the first day teaching community college English a lot, and especially if I got a really packed class. I'd tell them the first day about the enormous long research paper due at the end of the class; introduce something I called "little awful speeches" (which was everybody had to talk for one minute in front of the class about "a subject of interest to students of [insert name of class]," starting that very day right after the break, no exceptions--in a probably obvious attempt to get them to leave at break and race home to drop the class); mention they were going to write essays in class every week; and so on. And the first day I'd do my best to hold them for the entire three-hour allotted time (only the first day--three hour classes are abusive and unlike pratfalls and singing and pointing at maps with your feet, are not pedagogically sound strategy--so I tried to let them out at least a few minutes early the rest of the semester). If the class was crowded, on the first day I'd do anything I could think of to make it seem like the semester was going to be a godawful slog, all the while yacking about what fun we were all going to have, isn't the study of literature wonderful and invigorating, O the places you'll go, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
On the plus side, students who stayed did end up writing that massive paper and they did lose the horror of public speaking that comes from never speaking in public and thus never learning that speaking in public does not lead to death. They learned that they could do hard things. On the minus side, I bet there were several brilliant ones who fled in terror--because had it been me, I would have left at the break and raced home and dropped the class the next day because I didn't learn that it's possible to stand in front of a class and talk without dying until I was forced to teach English in graduate school.
If I'm remembering right, though, it's pretty hard as a high school kid to change your schedule around, so I don't think I would have done scary first-day performance art in a high school class because the poor things would be trapped so I couldn't have reduced my kathrillion-kid class-size, anyway. What would be the point?
posted by Don Pepino at 2:00 PM on August 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
Once I realized in the middle of yacking about it that I didn't really fully understand something we were discussing in a novel or an essay we were reading because I didn't know the geography, so I pulled down the big old-school roll-up map over the chalkboard for the first and last time in my teaching career. I was pointing at the relevant bit of one state or continent with my left hand and at some other state or continent with my right hand, and I needed to indicate some other locale, so I stood on one foot and vaguely waved at the third point on the map with the other foot. The students laughed, whereupon I realized that using one's foot as a pointer was an odd thing to do. But they were paying attention and learning and growing, so there you go: effective pedagogical strategy. Like from the ground up effective: if you don't know, don't try to hide it; there's no shame in not knowing, even if you're the teacher. But do some work to find out if you don't know. Pull down the big map and actually look at it. Take the time to figure it out. And if you're inspired by the quest for knowledge and you do something ridiculous chasing it down...? Well, good for you, that's fine and noble! I felt no embarrassment that time, either, because as I learned from my poetry prof, teaching is in a special, rarified non-embarrassment zone of existence.
Another person who taught me that feeling embarrassed because you're doing something ridiculous in front of students is absolutely optional was my high school guidance counselor, who was this toupee-wearing 40-year-old white guy who was always dressed in head-to-toe polyester and ridiculous wide ties, and he'd stride through the crowded halls of the high school yelling, "Right on! Give me five, brother!" and other decades-old youthspeak slogans from our parents' generation. At the time we all thought, "How witheringly embarrassing for the poor fellow," but of course he knew exactly what he was doing, namely being his actual age and celebrating his actual hilarious personality and his general Les Nesman style sense--and the fact that he knew zero about our generation's fashions and wasn't trying to find out and was feeling no shame about that. He also demonstrated in a very fun way that It Gets Better: later on you will be grown and secure in yourself, and you won't die if you're not wearing the Nike court shoe, white and blue, and the exact right pants and the exact right shirt exactly correctly and saying things in the exact right way for the exact year and hitting every trend exactly perfectly right. In fact, you won't even feel any pain, even if you're doing everything exactly wrong. Because of him I did not ever think I needed to try to pretend to be a youth culture native to communicate effectively with the youth, and that it was fine for them to know much, much more than I knew about the things they know, and that it's good to let them be experts in the things they're expert in and to learn from them.
...
I'm not sure what the point of this exercise was.
If it were community college and not high school, I'd say totally a weed-out move. IOW, maybe it was a cynical and cruel and probably pretty effective effort to reduce the size of the class and the teaching load as painlessly as possible. Could you have dropped and signed up for an easier class? Because if so... Okay, full disclosure: I did this kind of thing on the first day teaching community college English a lot, and especially if I got a really packed class. I'd tell them the first day about the enormous long research paper due at the end of the class; introduce something I called "little awful speeches" (which was everybody had to talk for one minute in front of the class about "a subject of interest to students of [insert name of class]," starting that very day right after the break, no exceptions--in a probably obvious attempt to get them to leave at break and race home to drop the class); mention they were going to write essays in class every week; and so on. And the first day I'd do my best to hold them for the entire three-hour allotted time (only the first day--three hour classes are abusive and unlike pratfalls and singing and pointing at maps with your feet, are not pedagogically sound strategy--so I tried to let them out at least a few minutes early the rest of the semester). If the class was crowded, on the first day I'd do anything I could think of to make it seem like the semester was going to be a godawful slog, all the while yacking about what fun we were all going to have, isn't the study of literature wonderful and invigorating, O the places you'll go, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
On the plus side, students who stayed did end up writing that massive paper and they did lose the horror of public speaking that comes from never speaking in public and thus never learning that speaking in public does not lead to death. They learned that they could do hard things. On the minus side, I bet there were several brilliant ones who fled in terror--because had it been me, I would have left at the break and raced home and dropped the class the next day because I didn't learn that it's possible to stand in front of a class and talk without dying until I was forced to teach English in graduate school.
If I'm remembering right, though, it's pretty hard as a high school kid to change your schedule around, so I don't think I would have done scary first-day performance art in a high school class because the poor things would be trapped so I couldn't have reduced my kathrillion-kid class-size, anyway. What would be the point?
posted by Don Pepino at 2:00 PM on August 4, 2023 [4 favorites]
As a HS English teacher, my best first day ever was doing a silly icebreaker and then introducing myself and the curriculum. The icebreaker was "my name is______ and I like_____." So standing in a circle, I started, "my name is Mr. Berlin and I like swimming." And you do a little motion like swimming. The next person in the circle then has to introduce me ("this is Mr. Berlin and he likes swimming") and do the little swimming motion. Then they introduce themselves, etc. The third person has to introduce me, the first student, and then themselves. Hopefully it gets all the way around the circle and back to me, so that I then go through every kid and their likes. So it becomes a kind of memory game. Even though it puts them on the spot, the rest of the kids are always really eager to help when they stumble or forget.
The benefits: I get to call every student by their preferred name on the first day, and I get most of the names repeated MANY times for my own benefit. And we sort of do team building with helping each other.
I've since added preferred pronouns, so we get to practice with those, too.
I'm a very self-deprecating humor kind of guy, so in my introductory slides about myself I'll start talking about my spouse, but the next slide is actually about our dog... and make a little joke about who is more important or something.
Now that I'm in a school for the arts, I'm actually going to bring in art previous students have created and show them off and talk about how exciting and interesting our books are going to be this year. And I'm totally stealing The Emperor of Ice Cream.
posted by Snowishberlin at 2:02 PM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
The benefits: I get to call every student by their preferred name on the first day, and I get most of the names repeated MANY times for my own benefit. And we sort of do team building with helping each other.
I've since added preferred pronouns, so we get to practice with those, too.
I'm a very self-deprecating humor kind of guy, so in my introductory slides about myself I'll start talking about my spouse, but the next slide is actually about our dog... and make a little joke about who is more important or something.
Now that I'm in a school for the arts, I'm actually going to bring in art previous students have created and show them off and talk about how exciting and interesting our books are going to be this year. And I'm totally stealing The Emperor of Ice Cream.
posted by Snowishberlin at 2:02 PM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
"Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead."
"Expect poison from the standing water."
My very first class in high school was English (I'm mathier than word-y, tyvm) and the teacher wasn't even in the room! She had written those two sentences on the board, and headed to the teachers' lounge to refill her coffee (or maybe she was just hiding in the hallway to see what we'd do?).
I diagrammed them in my notebook, just in case that's what today's lesson was going to be about.
When she came back in, she settled into the barstool behind her podium and asked what the sentences meant. I almost asked "who cares what they mean, I already diagrammed them." But for the rest of that hour, (and most of the rest of high school,) she (almost single-handedly) dragged me into the world of people who could appreciate the power of language and of story. RIP DG
(Bonus Mrs. DG story, even though I think I have 100 of them: we read Beowulf in Brit Lit, as one does. I submitted an essay with the title "Beowulf." She crossed it out (in pink, natch) and scribbled "you need a different title, this one is taken" in the margin. )
posted by adekllny at 2:29 PM on August 4, 2023 [7 favorites]
"Expect poison from the standing water."
My very first class in high school was English (I'm mathier than word-y, tyvm) and the teacher wasn't even in the room! She had written those two sentences on the board, and headed to the teachers' lounge to refill her coffee (or maybe she was just hiding in the hallway to see what we'd do?).
I diagrammed them in my notebook, just in case that's what today's lesson was going to be about.
When she came back in, she settled into the barstool behind her podium and asked what the sentences meant. I almost asked "who cares what they mean, I already diagrammed them." But for the rest of that hour, (and most of the rest of high school,) she (almost single-handedly) dragged me into the world of people who could appreciate the power of language and of story. RIP DG
(Bonus Mrs. DG story, even though I think I have 100 of them: we read Beowulf in Brit Lit, as one does. I submitted an essay with the title "Beowulf." She crossed it out (in pink, natch) and scribbled "you need a different title, this one is taken" in the margin. )
posted by adekllny at 2:29 PM on August 4, 2023 [7 favorites]
To this day, my most memorable start to a high school class was my Algebra II class. The room had those antique desks that are connected to the chairs. We were met at the door of the class by the teacher, who with absolutely no expression on his face, said in the most dry way possible "You will wait to hear your name called for your assigned seats." He then went column by column front to back of the class seating us alphabetically by last name. He then said that on the board he had written the problem set we were going to work on that day, quietly in our seats and that if we had a problem with the antique furniture, the guidance counselor's office was two floors up. He didn't say a word the rest of class.
It was genius really. Weirded the heck out of us all since it was so unlike our other classes. And the rest of the course was like that too. Every day, we would review the problem set from the day before and then start on the next problem set. It way so dry but he played it so well. Just expressionless. It was definitely partly an act though and he enjoyed teaching since he would provide extremely helpful feedback on exams. All our exams were on stationary with pictures and a jewel toned staple at the top. It was known that he collected trolls at home and he said if we were good he would bring the good luck troll for the final exam. One time a student asked during a silent class what he did for fun when he got home and he said without skipping a beat in the most neutral way possible "I go home and sit in my armchair and think about the squares and cubes of numbers. When asked whether he would curve grades for an exam he told us plainly that he would stand at the top of 5 stairs, throw all our exams in the air and give them letter grades based on where they landed.
So odd but so memorable and I did learn a ton in that class.
posted by donut_princess at 2:43 PM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
It was genius really. Weirded the heck out of us all since it was so unlike our other classes. And the rest of the course was like that too. Every day, we would review the problem set from the day before and then start on the next problem set. It way so dry but he played it so well. Just expressionless. It was definitely partly an act though and he enjoyed teaching since he would provide extremely helpful feedback on exams. All our exams were on stationary with pictures and a jewel toned staple at the top. It was known that he collected trolls at home and he said if we were good he would bring the good luck troll for the final exam. One time a student asked during a silent class what he did for fun when he got home and he said without skipping a beat in the most neutral way possible "I go home and sit in my armchair and think about the squares and cubes of numbers. When asked whether he would curve grades for an exam he told us plainly that he would stand at the top of 5 stairs, throw all our exams in the air and give them letter grades based on where they landed.
So odd but so memorable and I did learn a ton in that class.
posted by donut_princess at 2:43 PM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
Good question. I only taught HS one semester, and while I still have some contact with my students, one of them recently told me I was probably too academic for their level. So that's a caveat. I do teach first semester university students, so still full of hormones and confusion, and to be honest, I don't think a lot about the first day of class. We all have a journey ahead of us, and the first day is kind of full of extracurricular stuff. Who are the class-mates? Why didn't I get my book-package? Where is the cafeteria? Is this course hard?
In my experience, no one remembers a single word from that first day. I personally neither remember a thing from my first day at High School or my first day at university. Don't sweat it, what you do overall is more important.
Except: for the last two years, I have opened with a little talk about change. We need to deal with climate change, a biodiversity crisis, and a demographic challenge, and I, as an old person, have no answers with which I can deal with these issues and teach students. They are going have to figure that out on their own. But I have methods, and history, and I can help them get there. That usually gets them a bit more alert than what I have tried previous years.
But at the end of the day, most students don't even begin to get what I am teaching till at best at the end of the semester. I had a group of students challenging me at their 7th semester because they felt I hadn't taught essential skills. And then coming back after graduation to apologize. Why do I even still love teaching???
posted by mumimor at 2:52 PM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
In my experience, no one remembers a single word from that first day. I personally neither remember a thing from my first day at High School or my first day at university. Don't sweat it, what you do overall is more important.
Except: for the last two years, I have opened with a little talk about change. We need to deal with climate change, a biodiversity crisis, and a demographic challenge, and I, as an old person, have no answers with which I can deal with these issues and teach students. They are going have to figure that out on their own. But I have methods, and history, and I can help them get there. That usually gets them a bit more alert than what I have tried previous years.
But at the end of the day, most students don't even begin to get what I am teaching till at best at the end of the semester. I had a group of students challenging me at their 7th semester because they felt I hadn't taught essential skills. And then coming back after graduation to apologize. Why do I even still love teaching???
posted by mumimor at 2:52 PM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]
I memorized and performed a poem to my students the first day, John Ciardi’s “The Shark” (“though his eyes are bright/his thought is dark”), prowling around the room and absolutely getting in their faces with it. I taught middle school English and used scores and scores of poems in my curriculumand I expected my students to memorize and recite a poem once a month. And I wouldn’t ask my students to do anything I would t do, plus I wanted them to see how much fun it could be. By the end of the year their poem recitals were often a heck of a lot of fun.
posted by Peach at 3:37 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Peach at 3:37 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
Writing teacher wrote the letter “a” on the board and had us write it in our notebooks.
Then he told us to get up, marched us out the classroom door, and walked us down the hall and back to class again.
When we were all re-seated, he wrote “lot” on the board and had us write it in our notebooks.
He explained it was the only way in all his years of teaching he could get kids to stop writing “alot” as one word.
Great teacher! I think about him a lot.
posted by kapers at 5:18 PM on August 4, 2023 [11 favorites]
Then he told us to get up, marched us out the classroom door, and walked us down the hall and back to class again.
When we were all re-seated, he wrote “lot” on the board and had us write it in our notebooks.
He explained it was the only way in all his years of teaching he could get kids to stop writing “alot” as one word.
Great teacher! I think about him a lot.
posted by kapers at 5:18 PM on August 4, 2023 [11 favorites]
When I first walked into honors English class, it was a square of tables with chairs surrounding. The teacher was seated as we were, but with his back to the door. When we discussed Hamlet, or Rossum's Universal Robots or Wordsworth we were speaking as much to the class as to the teacher. I think that set a tone and an awareness that what we said mattered.
And on a more light hearted matter, when he returned our "blue books" from our first assignment, many of us had the covers marked "Sp!". He explained that he wouldn't take points off this time, but he called our attention to the words underneath each line that asked for Last Name and First Name and Class and Instructor. If you wrote "Lastname Firstname" then where was the comma? Some argued that SAT or AP exams (for instance) did not want punctuation. He replied that those were computer forms. This was a submitted paper for review by your instructor and should be written properly. We should realize there is a difference!
But in a sense both memories are fond to me, and deal with respect and standards.
posted by forthright at 5:56 PM on August 4, 2023
And on a more light hearted matter, when he returned our "blue books" from our first assignment, many of us had the covers marked "Sp!". He explained that he wouldn't take points off this time, but he called our attention to the words underneath each line that asked for Last Name and First Name and Class and Instructor. If you wrote "Lastname Firstname" then where was the comma? Some argued that SAT or AP exams (for instance) did not want punctuation. He replied that those were computer forms. This was a submitted paper for review by your instructor and should be written properly. We should realize there is a difference!
But in a sense both memories are fond to me, and deal with respect and standards.
posted by forthright at 5:56 PM on August 4, 2023
My senior year of High School economics teacher the started with his ten rules of committing a crime for money. They were legit rules like “Don’t commit a crime for less then $1M - not worth it” and “Never use a gun - the penalty is too high”.
It all came around to “If you’re going to commit crime, then white collar crime is the way to go -and to do that you’re going to need to understand how money works”.
He was one of the best teachers I ever had by an order of magnitude.
posted by bitdamaged at 10:01 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
It all came around to “If you’re going to commit crime, then white collar crime is the way to go -and to do that you’re going to need to understand how money works”.
He was one of the best teachers I ever had by an order of magnitude.
posted by bitdamaged at 10:01 PM on August 4, 2023 [3 favorites]
This won't really help you, but I had a high school teacher whose last name sounded like several different obscene things (think an ethnic name that sounded like "asscrack", but with several permutations). On the first day of classes, he listed off all the variations students had come up with over the years and said that if we came up with a new one to let him know.
It's the only first day of classes that I remember 20some years later.
posted by Candleman at 10:06 PM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's the only first day of classes that I remember 20some years later.
posted by Candleman at 10:06 PM on August 4, 2023 [2 favorites]
It was university but it would work for high school - my chemistry lecturer played the video of Three Little Pigs by Green Jello, then plunged his hands into a bowl of green jelly/o to illustrate that everything is matter.
posted by pianissimo at 11:34 PM on August 5, 2023
posted by pianissimo at 11:34 PM on August 5, 2023
Candleman's story reminded me of a similar anecdote.
A friend of mine once had a middle school teacher named Mr. Wiener, pronounced as you would expect.
His approach to teaching teenagers while being named Mr. Wiener was to set aside 5 minutes at the start of the first day, during which he encouraged the entire class to make as many jokes about his name as they liked. Following that 5 minutes, wiener jokes were strongly discouraged. It was apparently very effective.
posted by mekily at 10:55 AM on August 7, 2023
A friend of mine once had a middle school teacher named Mr. Wiener, pronounced as you would expect.
His approach to teaching teenagers while being named Mr. Wiener was to set aside 5 minutes at the start of the first day, during which he encouraged the entire class to make as many jokes about his name as they liked. Following that 5 minutes, wiener jokes were strongly discouraged. It was apparently very effective.
posted by mekily at 10:55 AM on August 7, 2023
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posted by ActingTheGoat at 11:15 AM on August 4, 2023 [5 favorites]