Sometimes, it’s so hard to understand why I got out of bed that morning. Today was one of those days. The kids were wild today, which is odd, because on Mondays, everybody is usually quite subdued. Three things happened today that made me do a double take and wonder if I were stuck in some awful pedagogical nightmare:

1. I hand a paper to a student that says Chapter 4 Practice Problem in large bold letters across the top. The student looks at it and asks, "Is this the chapter 4 practice problem?" Why?!?
2. In animation class, I decided it would be a good idea to review a short exercise about guide layers. I figured the best way to do this would be to have the students walk through a guide layer activity we did about three weeks ago. Before we began the activity, I announced not once, not twice, but three times in my manly teacher voice that "We have already done this activity. I want us to do it again as a review." Not more than thirty seconds after I have made this announcement and written the page numbers on the board did I hear from two different people, "We’ve already done this! Do you want us to do it again?" Why?!?
   
3. During break, I was in the hallway watching the kids file in from sixth period. A big, corn-fed boy comes barreling down the hallway and tackles the water fountain mounted to the wall. It knocks him backwards, and when he bounces to his feet and yells, "Take that you son of a…" As if this once incident wasn’t dumb enough, I have witnessed this no less than four times in the last year. Apparently, that water fountain plays a mean right tackle. Why?