The deck is stacked against me

Sometimes as a teacher I feel like banging my head against the wall because I see the deck stacked against me. This is not going to be a rant about the the lack of parental support my students receive or the breakdown of the American family unit being the cause for nearly all of education's woes... no, this is going to be a more light-hearted look at what I'm up against on a daily basis. These are true things that have happened to me in my teaching career. Not my colleagues, but me! Ready?

I have a poster of the Statue of Liberty in my classroom. A student in all seriousness asked, "Why is that statue holding an ice cream cone?"

After a unit on inventors and inventions, I asked who invented the airplane. The response? Orville Redenbacher. I said no, you're thinking of Orville Wright. The student said, "Oh that's right. Orville Redenbacher invented popcorn." Sheesh!

After a unit on European history, I was asking some review questions. One particular question had the expected answer of Leonardo DaVinci. The answer I received was Leonardo DiCaprio. Oh Lord!

Another time we were doing research reports on animals. A student asked for my help because he could find no info on his animal. "What animal did you choose?", I asked. The student replied, "The Pink Panther".

Early in my career, I decided to have the students bring in donations for the "Adopt a Whale" program (gimme a break, I was a rookie, okay?). A student asked if we were really going to adopt a whale. I said we certainly were. He innocently asked, "Where are we going to keep it?"

Here's one from the parental side of things... I have a parent who regularly picks up and drops off her child. She wears (almost every day) a sweatshirt that reads, "If you think I'm a b**ch, you should meet my sister". Seriously? In an elementary school?????

Here's another one involving a parent. Occasionally parents come in to observe their children in class. This is something we teachers encourage. Yep! Come on in and see why your little angel is getting an "F". Anyway, on this particular day I was teaching and kept hearing this murmur. I thought some student was talking and doing a good job of hiding it. Boy, was I wrong. It turns out this parent was on her cell phone having a conversation in the FRONT ROW of my classroom!

And there my friends, is just a small sampling of why teachers need that summer break. A person can only take so much :-)