Mermaids Are Not Real

"Mermaids are real."

I spent three days at the continuation high school last week. On two of those days, two different students informed me of this mermaid thing.

"It was a documentary on the Discovery Channel."

Now that I think about it, I'm sure that this came up other times as well, but I hadn't been in a position to ask follow up questions. These days, however, I could.

The first time we were in a computer class. The student explained that he had seen it on Facebook. Someone posted a link. There were pictures. There was video. Mermaids actually exist.

I was dubious. Students also believe in the Illuminati. In fact, I think that was one of the arguments against that I used. And of course I was informed that I was mistaken--the Illuminati are real.

Sure they are.

I believe a lot of things that most people would call crazy. (I don't blast them on the blog all that often.) But I draw the line at mythical creatures. Bigfoot? The Loch Ness Monster? Hoaxes. Mermaids? Whatever they had seen had to be fake.

Right?

The second time it came up was the next day in the journalism class (the class that writes the school paper). They were doing current events. The current events they discussed were real news events, but somehow the conversation got sidetracked into the mermaid thing.

One girl swore to everyone that she had seen the Discovery Channel documentary, and that mermaids really do exist.

Now, I'm still pretty sure that this isn't real. But now I need to do some research. Because this myth has gone viral, at least amongst the students at the continuation high school, and I need to find out what's behind it.

Turns out, my mother had seen the same doc. With my nephew. But it wasn't a documentary. It was more of a mockumentary. A quick Internet search, and I found what it is everyone has been talking about.

It was on Animal Planet, not the Discovery Channel.

• From Business Insider. 
• And more of an explanation as to the phenomenon of the "doc". 
• Some of the videos via Animal Planet's website. 
• And the disclaimer that the continuation high school students seem to have missed. 

It's War of the Worlds all over again. For a new generation.

One More

It was a curious assignment. A group quiz. Um, okay...

Finals are rapidly approaching. The class had been divided into groups so they could review. They'd been working together on a study guide.

I was to pass out this quiz to the whole class. They could discuss but not copy. Each student got his/her own quiz, and the group would get a score consisting of everyone's effort.

They had 20 minutes.

It was a middle school class, so I told them they had 15 minutes. (The lesson plan said give them 15-20 minutes.) A few needed the push. (I found students goofing off rather than working even after I explained the time limit.)

After 20 minutes, I called time.

Many loudly complained. Many tried to finish "one more". Only one student held on tight to his paper as I went to remove it from him.

He should have put down his pencil when I called time. He continued to work, as did many in the class. But everyone else relinquished their papers when I held out my hand for them.

Even after I'd collected everything, this boy kept after me. He asked me to give him his paper back. He only had one more he had to finish. He needed more time. His teacher always gave the class as much time as they needed to finish quizzes. They were only studying for the rest of the period, so it wasn't like there wasn't time for him to finish the quiz in class.

And on and on it went. I don't know why he thought this would work. I explained that his teacher said in the lesson plan that they were to only get 20 minutes (she even typed this in all caps), and that by the time I picked up their papers, they had gotten closer to 22 minutes to work on the quiz.

It got so bad that the rest of the students in his group wanted to distance themselves from him. For fear of blowback, I assume.

I got a chance to see the teacher at the end of the day. She asked how things went. I told her about the boy.

She was surprised who had given me these issues. She said he was a good boy. A studious boy. And then it hit her--he was rather worried about his grade in the class. He's an 8th grader. End of the year stuff is coming up, and he's worried about being allowed to participate.

The other thing: the teacher didn't think they would finish the quiz.  

Ah well. I'm sure he didn't do as badly (or the quiz counted as much) as he feared.

Match Interrupted

Surprisingly, we got through the assigned reading. (I didn't expect these boys to be all that helpful, but they actually were!) The rest of the assignment was to do some questions as a class.

Number one was a long answer. I read the question, pointed out where the answer was, and then went to the teacher's desk to deal with the roll while they wrote down that answer.

The teacher had his own rosters, but I had rosters I had to turn in to the office for attendance. I only took roll on one, then transferred the information to the other when I got a spare moment. This was my spare moment. It took maybe a minute. I returned to the front of the room...

Two students had positioned themselves on the same chair. Arms linked. Elbows on table. An arm wrestling match about to begin.

The rest of the class watched, cell phones out and set to record.

I don't often yell. It does no good. I may get a momentary lull in crazy, but then the crazy comes back only worse.

But still, I lost it. I think I said, "Oh, no, you don't!" I said something about phones. Yelling was involved.

The tirade is probably posted on YouTube somewhere. But not much of it, because those phones got put away quickly. And the arm wrestling match did not happen.

I turn around for one minute...

Magic Lost

Last week, JEFritz made a very good point in response to my what if.

Question:

What if magic was possible in our world--has been possible all along? What if the only thing keeping us from doing all those things depicted in books or pictured in movies is our belief that magic is not possible?

Her response:

Hm, makes me wonder how to believe enough to make it work. If I tested it by jumping out a plane, just to make things serious, but there's a tiny bit of doubt that holds me back (which it totally would, I'm such a skeptic) and I'm smashed to jam on impact. I probably shouldn't test it that way.

So, let's take it a step further. Suppose magic is possible in our world, but we've been conditioned to not believe. How would we regain that belief?

What if you were trying to regain lost magic? How would you go about reacquiring it? Could it be relearned, or is it lost forever? 

Versatile Blogger Award

VR Barkowski awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award last week. (Thank you. I'm so honored.)

As is the usual procedure, there are a few things that go along with this:

• Create a post for the Versatile Blogger Award.
• Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to her blog.
• Reveal seven (7) little known facts about yourself.
• Nominate others for the award.

Little known facts? Yikes. I don't think there's very much that's little known. I'm pretty boring. Hmmm...

1. At the moment, I have three different stories that I'm working on. Some days I'll spend some time on two different ones. Others I'll only work on one. But I've made progress on all three within the last week.
2. One of the stories is my first novel. I'm rewriting it. Again. But this time I think it's going to work.
3. I only listen to music when I'm in my car, when I have to set an alarm in the morning (I wake to music), or while I'm getting ready for work. 
4. Because of this, I know next to nothing about the current bands that are popular now. I may know a song that I like, but I'll have no idea what its title is or who sings it. 
5. Which is totally funny, as I practically minored in music in college. Really. I was something like two classes short. I did music theory, music history, and I played in band the entire time I was there. 
6. I still have my oboe. I haven't touched it since I graduated, though. 
7. At the moment, my first novel has a scene where the characters go to a concert. And for some strange reason, I can't get it to work.  

As for nominees, I'm going to do what I always do. If you're reading this post, consider yourself awarded.

Fight Talk

They started off describing the time they got arrested in Redondo Beach. Then the conversation veered into fighting--who they beat up, when, and whether they "won".

I know this because I heard every word. So did most of the school, I'd imagine. Probably the elementary school across the street heard it as well.

I knew I wasn't going to get any work out of them. (I suppose I could have tried harder...) I asked the boys to take their volume down. They didn't have to project their voices quite so much. The room wasn't that large, and they were sitting next to each other.

This, of course, they did not do.

But the rest of the class was on task. Certain questions about the assignment repeated all day. I turned to help a student with one of these.

One of the boys suddenly turned in his seat to the boy behind him, asking about question number 2. (This was more than 45 minutes into the period.)

I wasn't surprised to find the principal and a district official had dropped in. (I heard they were coming before class.) I was surprised how quickly the boys went from fight talk to a pretense of doing the assignment.

As soon as the visitors left, the boys went back to their previous conversation. Naturally.

But before the end of the period, they suddenly got busy. Curious, I checked their desks to find them busily copying the finished work from one of the girls in the class.

Sigh.

I took the paper from them. They did not protest.

Why, oh why, do students do this? They let the boys goof off for the entire period, and then give them their hard work to copy. I don't get it.

A Bad Wake Up Call

I woke at 5 AM. This is normal. Most mornings, I'll wake sometime between 4:45 and 5:45. Since the sub caller doesn't call until nearly 6 AM, my challenge is to go back to sleep.

Some mornings I actually succeed.

This morning, the ringing of my phone jerked me awake. When I heard the name the sub caller gave me, however, I wished I was back asleep.

I dread certain classes for various reasons. Classes that I can't control. Teachers who don't leave me anything. Loud students who won't settle down.

This class usually has all three.

I did groan when the sub caller said the name. I did also take the assignment.

Turned out not to be as bad as anticipated. Did I have lesson plans? No. But we managed to find the projector, and having movies on seemed to keep the kiddos from going crazy.

(What do I mean by crazy? Students chasing each other brandishing music stands.)

Ah well. It's work, right?