Orange you gonna squeeze me, 'neath the mellow, yellow moon?

In order to ask forgiveness for my little rant about my student thinking I am a mad person, I will tell you about class on Thursday night.

We are working on writing all different sorts of papers, and I had them do my favorite activity. This is the one activity that I have thought of that makes me feel like a really clever teacher. And in my defense, it actually is pretty clever. I did it as a teaching demo for a job interview last summer, and all the teachers wanted to use it. And I was offered the job.

Unfortunately, it is the type of activity that makes some students ridiculously uncomfortable. Which becomes even more unfortunate because in this particular class, I have so many students that I have had before. I pulled two envelopes out of my folder of materials and drew a triangle on the board and two of the students exclaimed, "Oh no! Not this!" And groaned the whole way through.

The rest of the class really enjoyed it and got into the acting.

But as I was explaining what the activity is about (thinking about your audience) and how to do it, I was looking around the room at all of the students. (It's important to make eye contact). I looked at one side, then glanced over at the other side, and went WHOA!

(Not out loud).

One of my students, a young lady of about 19, is completely orange!

She has bleached, platinum-blonde hair, and underneath that her face is completely orange! She was wearing a tank top (it's gotten hot here this week) and her arms were orange too!

I think what made this even more shocking is the number of pale faces in the class. Given my location in a land-locked state, most of the students aren't developing tans this summer, and wow. She's just orange.

I wonder if anyone has told her that?

***

On another note, I have decided to start another blog. In the current climate of recession/or something, I find myself surrounded by businesses that are cutting back, people who are cutting back, and a general attitude of doing less (hopefully for less money). People always seem to aim this toward food, and I have found myself caught in the desire to spend less money on food. So I am going to try to record my food journey, and I figure the only way I'll do that is in another blog. And then I will try to make it interesting, rather than just writing numbers for me.

So if you want to take a peak, it's http://payingtocook.blogspot.com/