Mrs. Cheney's students say . . .

***WARNING--MAY CONTAIN 9TH GRADE HUMOR***

Friday is quiz day in Mrs. Cheney's language arts classes. My 9th graders are learning Greek and Latin word cells. The weekly quiz includes an oral portion in which Mrs. Cheney reads the list and students write each cell and its meaning. Today's list included the word cell "dic" which means "speak". I've been doing this for a couple of years, and I've yet to encounter the class that doesn't giggle when they hear Mrs. Cheney say "dic". Which means "speak".

Of course none of my classes surprised me with silence today.

My 6th hour class just may be the rowdiest class I've ever had as a teacher. I was fully expecting them to titter during the quiz today. But it didn't stop at the titter. Oh no. Why do anything small when you can super-size it? That's their motto. So it didn't surprise me when they all wanted to talk at one. I informed them that I would only listen to those students whose hands were raised. (ugh, huge mistake, right?) To my surprise, a girl on the front row, who's usually pretty good, raised her hand. I figured she was safe to call on, so I did.

And this is what she said.

"I know a guy who's name is Dick Astle and it's spelled a-s-t-l-e but the t is silent."

How could I possible refrain from laughing at that? I'm sorry to say I couldn't.

Oh dear.

After several seconds of good solid laughter, we got back on track for the quiz. Unfortunately we derailed once again. While we were correcting the quiz in class, I did this thing I sometimes can't help from doing. I opened my mouth and let a bunch of words spill out without pre-approving them with my brain. When we came to "dic" which means "speak", instead of just spelling the cell and saying the meaning, I said something like this:

"Dic, d-i-c, which means speak, or in the case of Mr. Astle, is an unfortunate first name."

Oh dear.