Everyday is a rollercoaster as a teacher. Today, I’m focusing on the great.

1. We started reading Romeo and Juliet today with my 9th graders. I had some kids who were totally scared of the language, but by the end of the first day, they wanted to read bigger parts.
2. One boy opened the play and was skimming it, and just exclaimed “MY NAKED SWORD IS DRAWN!” When it was super-quiet.
3. In related news, when Capulet tells his wife to “fetch me my long-sword, ho!” the kids laugh for ages and I have to help them understand what ho meant in the play.
4. When some kids get the dirty jokes, but others don’t, so the ones who get them slowly spread the information to the ones who don’t. Their eyes get huge like “NO WAY!”
5. The word “thrust” is funny to 9th graders, even when talking about actual sword fighting.
6. One kid: “he’s so EMO! Emo-Romeo!”
7. Another kid, as he’s reading a line with a double-entendre, realized what he was saying and started giggling, then says to himself “oh, this gonna be good.”
8. In another class, one of my students couldn’t decide which project he wanted to do from the choices, so he asked “I want to do two – can I do two for extra credit?” He doesn’t need extra credit; he just needed a reason to be able to do two creative projects.

Every day there are things to look back at and wish I’d done better. I’ve been thinking about one such moment for much of the night, in fact, and cringing. It’s hard to remember that the good usually outweighs the bad. Today we had a lot of great moments. Here’s hoping tomorrow brings some more.