Verification that I am a beloved teacher...

In class yesterday, we were learning a system for acquiring vocabulary as part of our new reading unit. Usually the kids hate vocab, but they seemed pretty in to this. Not to pat my self on the back (which is hard for me to do anyways because I am such a pleasant type of rotund and womanly endowed), but I was teaching it in a very interesting way. 

We were talking about using the dictionary to "verify" the meaning of a new word after using context clues to infer the meaning. They didn't know the word verify. Which, as you can imagine, makes it hard for them to do when trying to decipher the meaning of the original word. Also, they wouldn't know decipher.

So, we practiced our system with the word verify. A particularly plucky student says "Like, if we were going to verify that you were the REAL Miss Deighton and not some robot sent to replace you."

Now, some teachers would not allow this sort of tom foolery in their classroom. Most teachers would not even have to address this sort of foolery, but I am not some or most teachers. Plus, I need a little something hilarious to make it through the day. Recall that I don't drink.

Seeing this as a great teaching opportunity (and a waste of the extra 8 minutes I had left the period before), I accepted the challenge. I was thus bombarded with questions about my personal preferences including but not limited to:

"When's your birthday?"

"How many sisters do you have?"

"Are you a robot or alien?"

"What's your favorite color?"

I am proud to say that my answers were satisfactory enough to appease them. I was deemed, in fact, Miss Deighton and allowed to continue the vocabulary lesson. I was only slightly disturbed that they knew quite so much about me, but then again...you don't get voted "Teacher who treats students most like people and not just like students" without sharing a little bit of yourself too. Right, I was also voted that this week by a small group of kids working on a committee to increase Respect, Pride, and Belonging at our school.

All in all, a person win this week!