No Stone Left Unturned
1/7/17
While teaching Gifted middle school students in the 1990’s, I loved the way our school allowed us to meet the needs of these high IQ students. There were several ways the state requirements told us we could administer this service but we had to satisfy 4 ½ hours of Gifted instruction a week.
1. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom 1 hour a day for 5 days.
2. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom for 2 ½ hours a day twice a week.
3. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom 5 hours a day once a week.
(The remaining 2 ½ hours in the school day involved elective classes, i.e.: physical education, consumer science, foreign language, etc.)
We chose the 3rd option. It was GREAT!
We were allowed to teach straight through a day without the disruption of class changes and herding students from one place to another. Sure, we took breaks, changed up the curriculum like they would in their ordinary day, but we weren’t confined to mandatory classroom changes – going from one subject teacher to another. We could spend as much time on a subject as we wanted. If a certain lesson ran over the time we thought it would take, what did it matter? We could adjust.
Since middle grades consisted of 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, depending on the number of students in each grade level, we divided the grades up and then divided the week up to accommodate. We coordinated our lessons into units of Math, English, Social Studies/Geography, and Life Science which might parallel what their regular classroom was studying. We didn’t want to duplicate. We added information to their studies and could work faster since the number of students was smaller.
On a 7th grade day, I taught a lesson from the Life Science curriculum. But because I enjoyed adding humor to most situations, I wanted to really surprise my middle school learners. I dressed it up a bit. And not in a pretty way. I mean in a rather PG-13 rating shocking way. I knew from previous years they loved to be grossed out. I took a good bit of information from THE ALMANAC OF THE GROSS, DISGUSTING & TOTALLY REPULSIVE ~ a compendium of fulsome facts by Eric Elfman. Man, this was stuff I didn’t really want to know and have never kept my toothbrush exposed on my bathroom counter since (“BATHROOM – No doubt the grossest room in the house, the bathroom is constantly being assaulted by dangerous bacteria each time the toilet is flushed. With each flush, a fine mist consisting of billions of water droplets rises into the air. Hundreds of thousands of these droplets contain bacteria from our intestines. These bacteria land on every surface of the bathroom – floors, cabinets, sink, door-knob, even your toothbrush.” Page 46). Cool. But disgusting.
I would inform them about bodily functions as on page 14 – entitled WASTE 101. “It is often said that what goes up must come down. Less often said, but equally true, is what goes in must come out…”
I mentioned to them that in our fluid waste discussion, “The average person loses about five pints of liquid a day, in the following ways:
Urine – 2.5 pints
Perspiration – 1.25 pints
Exhaled moisture from lungs – 1 pint
Feces – (about ¾ of fecal matter is water) – .25 pint.”
After this information, I gave them a demonstration. I had previously poured apple juice into a vile so that they did not know that what they were seeing WAS apple juice. I then asked them to pass it around, which of course there were lots of “EEWWWWs!” But they gladly did so. Especially the boys.
Of course, I eventually let them in on my high jinx, which they had come to expect from me over time.
One year I developed problems from having a gall stone. Actually more than one stone. I researched the situation and tried to avoid surgery as I had already had a caesarian birth and ovarian cyst removal and just didn’t want any more cutting. I schedule several doctors appointments to see if I could avoid going under the knife. I even made an appointment with a Dr. Carter, an urologist in Atlanta, who I had heard invented Shock Wave Lithotripsy (SWL) which is the most common treatment for kidney stones in the U.S. According to
https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/k..., “Shock waves from outside the body are targeted at a kidney stone causing the stone to fragment. The stones are broken into tiny pieces. lt is sometimes called ESWL: Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy®.
These are what the words mean:
• extracorporeal: from outside the body
• shock waves: pressure waves
• lithotripsy (the Greek roots of this word are "litho" meaning stone, "tripsy" meaning crushed)
So, SWL describes a nonsurgical technique for treating stones in the kidney or ureter (the tube going from the kidney to the bladder) using high-energy shock waves. Stones are broken into "stone dust" or fragments that are small enough to pass in urine. lf large pieces remain, another treatment can be performed.”
And I heard you were submerged in a pool to have it done.
I thought if you can get rid of kidney STONES this way, why not GALL stones? Well, after meeting with him, I found that removing gall stones doesn’t work that way. I would have to have surgery.
Luckily for me they had developed a new way to remove gall stones: laparoscopic gallbladder surgery which removes the gallbladder and gallstones through several small incisions in the abdomen.
After it was all over, they asked if I would like to keep the stones. I said yes. They gave me a small glass container to store them in. Now, long story short (too late), this was going to be another life science lesson for 7th graders. I brought out the enclosed glass container with a gall stones.
Not telling them what was in the glass jar, I just mentioned that I had purchased a few rare stones. It cost (I really don’t remember the cost of the operation in 1998 but I would venture to guess it was around $3,000. The national average I read today is for an operation in 2005 and it says that gallbladder removal by laparoscope [without complications or pre-existing conditions] is $19,314. {http://tinyurl.com/jm4yhfp} WOW! I am glad I had mine done in my small town in Georgia). Would they like to see them?
Those poor little 7th graders. A captured audience. What were they supposed to say? Of course they wanted to see my rare stone that I told them I had paid big bucks for. So, I whipped it out. I handed it to the first person on the front row and they proceeded to past it from student to student. While they were examining, I expounded about that they came from a unique place and that they very valuable, that I would never have another one, and I wanted to share it with them so they could get a good look at such rare stones, etc.
The gall stone itself looked like a cocklebur: round but with grey/brown spiky points sticking out. But since they hadn’t seen a STONE like that, they didn’t question. Right at the last of the students to handle the jar, I told them the relationship to the stones and me. That was a great moment, too. Another gross-out!
And of course I always told these gross stories right before we’d break for lunch to make it more effective, timing it right down to the minute the lunch bell rang as they walked and gagged to line up for lunch.
#originalbadteacher #Southernbadgirl #Scarlettwannabe #tricksupmysleeve #teacherstorybookcomingsoon
While teaching Gifted middle school students in the 1990’s, I loved the way our school allowed us to meet the needs of these high IQ students. There were several ways the state requirements told us we could administer this service but we had to satisfy 4 ½ hours of Gifted instruction a week.
1. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom 1 hour a day for 5 days.
2. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom for 2 ½ hours a day twice a week.
3. We could pull-out the students from their regular classroom to visit their government mandated Gifted classroom 5 hours a day once a week.
(The remaining 2 ½ hours in the school day involved elective classes, i.e.: physical education, consumer science, foreign language, etc.)
We chose the 3rd option. It was GREAT!
We were allowed to teach straight through a day without the disruption of class changes and herding students from one place to another. Sure, we took breaks, changed up the curriculum like they would in their ordinary day, but we weren’t confined to mandatory classroom changes – going from one subject teacher to another. We could spend as much time on a subject as we wanted. If a certain lesson ran over the time we thought it would take, what did it matter? We could adjust.
Since middle grades consisted of 6th, 7th, and 8th grades, depending on the number of students in each grade level, we divided the grades up and then divided the week up to accommodate. We coordinated our lessons into units of Math, English, Social Studies/Geography, and Life Science which might parallel what their regular classroom was studying. We didn’t want to duplicate. We added information to their studies and could work faster since the number of students was smaller.
On a 7th grade day, I taught a lesson from the Life Science curriculum. But because I enjoyed adding humor to most situations, I wanted to really surprise my middle school learners. I dressed it up a bit. And not in a pretty way. I mean in a rather PG-13 rating shocking way. I knew from previous years they loved to be grossed out. I took a good bit of information from THE ALMANAC OF THE GROSS, DISGUSTING & TOTALLY REPULSIVE ~ a compendium of fulsome facts by Eric Elfman. Man, this was stuff I didn’t really want to know and have never kept my toothbrush exposed on my bathroom counter since (“BATHROOM – No doubt the grossest room in the house, the bathroom is constantly being assaulted by dangerous bacteria each time the toilet is flushed. With each flush, a fine mist consisting of billions of water droplets rises into the air. Hundreds of thousands of these droplets contain bacteria from our intestines. These bacteria land on every surface of the bathroom – floors, cabinets, sink, door-knob, even your toothbrush.” Page 46). Cool. But disgusting.
I would inform them about bodily functions as on page 14 – entitled WASTE 101. “It is often said that what goes up must come down. Less often said, but equally true, is what goes in must come out…”
I mentioned to them that in our fluid waste discussion, “The average person loses about five pints of liquid a day, in the following ways:
Urine – 2.5 pints
Perspiration – 1.25 pints
Exhaled moisture from lungs – 1 pint
Feces – (about ¾ of fecal matter is water) – .25 pint.”
After this information, I gave them a demonstration. I had previously poured apple juice into a vile so that they did not know that what they were seeing WAS apple juice. I then asked them to pass it around, which of course there were lots of “EEWWWWs!” But they gladly did so. Especially the boys.
Of course, I eventually let them in on my high jinx, which they had come to expect from me over time.
One year I developed problems from having a gall stone. Actually more than one stone. I researched the situation and tried to avoid surgery as I had already had a caesarian birth and ovarian cyst removal and just didn’t want any more cutting. I schedule several doctors appointments to see if I could avoid going under the knife. I even made an appointment with a Dr. Carter, an urologist in Atlanta, who I had heard invented Shock Wave Lithotripsy (SWL) which is the most common treatment for kidney stones in the U.S. According to
https://www.kidney.org/atoz/content/k..., “Shock waves from outside the body are targeted at a kidney stone causing the stone to fragment. The stones are broken into tiny pieces. lt is sometimes called ESWL: Extracorporeal Shock Wave Lithotripsy®.
These are what the words mean:
• extracorporeal: from outside the body
• shock waves: pressure waves
• lithotripsy (the Greek roots of this word are "litho" meaning stone, "tripsy" meaning crushed)
So, SWL describes a nonsurgical technique for treating stones in the kidney or ureter (the tube going from the kidney to the bladder) using high-energy shock waves. Stones are broken into "stone dust" or fragments that are small enough to pass in urine. lf large pieces remain, another treatment can be performed.”
And I heard you were submerged in a pool to have it done.
I thought if you can get rid of kidney STONES this way, why not GALL stones? Well, after meeting with him, I found that removing gall stones doesn’t work that way. I would have to have surgery.
Luckily for me they had developed a new way to remove gall stones: laparoscopic gallbladder surgery which removes the gallbladder and gallstones through several small incisions in the abdomen.
After it was all over, they asked if I would like to keep the stones. I said yes. They gave me a small glass container to store them in. Now, long story short (too late), this was going to be another life science lesson for 7th graders. I brought out the enclosed glass container with a gall stones.
Not telling them what was in the glass jar, I just mentioned that I had purchased a few rare stones. It cost (I really don’t remember the cost of the operation in 1998 but I would venture to guess it was around $3,000. The national average I read today is for an operation in 2005 and it says that gallbladder removal by laparoscope [without complications or pre-existing conditions] is $19,314. {http://tinyurl.com/jm4yhfp} WOW! I am glad I had mine done in my small town in Georgia). Would they like to see them?
Those poor little 7th graders. A captured audience. What were they supposed to say? Of course they wanted to see my rare stone that I told them I had paid big bucks for. So, I whipped it out. I handed it to the first person on the front row and they proceeded to past it from student to student. While they were examining, I expounded about that they came from a unique place and that they very valuable, that I would never have another one, and I wanted to share it with them so they could get a good look at such rare stones, etc.
The gall stone itself looked like a cocklebur: round but with grey/brown spiky points sticking out. But since they hadn’t seen a STONE like that, they didn’t question. Right at the last of the students to handle the jar, I told them the relationship to the stones and me. That was a great moment, too. Another gross-out!
And of course I always told these gross stories right before we’d break for lunch to make it more effective, timing it right down to the minute the lunch bell rang as they walked and gagged to line up for lunch.
#originalbadteacher #Southernbadgirl #Scarlettwannabe #tricksupmysleeve #teacherstorybookcomingsoon
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