My building at the school is closed at lunch, but I heard someone on the stair landing today. I called down, “Did you see the sign on the door?”

One of my science students was there with a girl. He looked up at me and said, “No.”

“This building is closed at lunch. You shouldn’t be in here.”

They get up. “You’re weird, Mrs. Pedersen.”

“I’m weird?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s okay. I like weird.”

“You’re one of the nicest teachers I know.”

“Ha ha. Bye, now.”

I just learned about a documentary-style show on TruTV called “The Principal’s Office”. Unfortunately, I do not get this channel. But I really am enjoying the clips on the Web site. The most amusing moments seem to involve student excuses.

I am thus inspired to catalog the student excuses I have personally received, starting with a couple I heard just this week:

“You only gave me one warning.”
“What? ‘Faggot’ is a bundle of sticks.”

In my design classes we’ve been working on making posters for our classroom walls. Each poster gives a visual representation of the 4 main design principles as outlined on “The Non-Designer’s Design Book” by Robin Williams.

Proximity Poster
Alignment Poster
Repetition Poster
Contrast Poster

Back-to-School night is next Tuesday, so I recruited my students to select the best posters to display on the wall. I cut up star-sticker sheets into groups of three stickers. I have a medium rectangle table I can set up for special projects like this vote we did today. I let the students spread the posters out on the table to sift through.

We voted on the first three posters today (we’re still wrapping up the fourth.) Each student got three stickers for each round of voting, totaling nine votes per student. I had each period vote only on the posters for the other two design periods, not their own. I did this to discourage favoritism (and let kids avoid hurting each other’s feelings by not voting for someone standing right next to them.)

Here are the voting guidelines I put on the board:

Do:

• Select your fave 3 posters by affixing a star to the backs.
• Vote according to the quality of the design.

Do Not:

• Affix more than 1 of your stickers to the same poster.
• Vote according to the name of the designer.
• Keep the stickers for yourself.
• Let the posters fall to the floor or get crumpled.

The vote went exceedingly well. The students chose want they want in the room without my input. I love their choices, too, now that I’ve counted the star-votes. A few of students are really “stellar”, having received more than 30 votes across all three posters. One young lady got 65 in total. Just amazing.

Update 9/7/08
The top ten posters for each principle are now viewable in the gallery.

I found the culprit, Athena:

Front left paw.

Here are three snapshots from tests I gave in graphic design. The students were bright but stumped, and very, very creative.

Click an image for a larger version: