Stuff and Things

hotd is a comedy, actually

“Why are you American?” I asked, to which I got:

“Sorry, it’s getting better” in a stereotypical posh English accent.

“Why are you English?” I asked, amused.

“What is he normally?” He managed to ask.

“He? You’re not anyone else, you’re you.”

THANK YOU, RYAN BERGARA AND SHANE MADEJ! Buzzfeed Unsolved (2016 - 2021)

me: *flips pillow over to the cold side and goes back to sleep*

ah, how could I forget the best one

Wasting time.

Aka. I just wanted to draw kitty cat.

This is the thread I got mad in!

Aside from the fact that kids (and adults!) need and are entitled to regular mental breaks, keeping a bored kid in the classroom isn’t going to magically make them pay attention. What it IS going to do is create an environment of distraction for the people around them. You wanna know how I know? I was that kid. I have adhd, and when I wasn’t able to get up and walk around, I talked to everyone. Constantly. When allowed to go outside and refresh my brain when needed, I became a lot less disruptive.

And when it’s older kids? If a high schooler doesn’t want to learn something, they’re not going to, and you can’t make them. That’s their mistake to make. As a teacher, try making the material more accessible and engaging. That’s your job. Whether the student does their job is on them.

The kids learned to be respectful of the food BY THEMSELVES. Y’all should have seen it. Kids were policing each other in how much food they took, so that one student wouldn’t take all the zebra cakes or whatever, but not a single time was a kid scolded for taking a couple packs of crackers or whatever. And they all made sure that no one left trash around. 

I always thought she did it because our class was just before lunch so we were all starving, but nope. It was every class.

My AP English teacher had a bowl of granola bars & two coffee pots set up in the back. One with coffee & one with plain hot water (she provided Lipton tea but you could bring in whatever you wanted).

If you brought in fancy coffee, you got to be her favorite for the day. It only meant you got a star sticker slapped on your forehead, which you wouldn’t think high schoolers would care about, but we did. 🤣

She also had a pizza fund for each class. Mason jars with tape identifying which class it was. We’d toss in our change & whatever & once we hit $20, she’d order us all pizza.

It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized ordering five pizzas was a bit more than $20. She just wanted us to feel a sense of accomplishment. ❤️

One of my history teachers liked to bake & he’d take votes on what cookies to bring in. His snicker doodles were out of this world delicious & I tried for four years to get the recipe out of him. LOL

My french teacher knew that my adhd medication started to wear off during her class, and one of the side effects was that it would suppress my appetite. This meant that once i got to her class i would be hungry and want to eat the snacks id packed for the day. She let me eat my goldfish while i worked because she knew that those goldfish were probably the first thing id eaten that day.

The best teachers i had were the ones that knew i had adhd and worked around it. They didnt mind if i took a 10 minute break from working to just doodle because they understood that me sketching was my way of resetting my brain.

Very rarely did I have to use that stash, but every time I did no one was ever bothered by it. My classmates would pretend it wasn’t there and we’d merely continue on with our work, and my teachers would always come around and check on me when they saw I was having a snack, which I always found very kind. Oftentimes in our elementary school one kid would just bring snacks for everybody (usually in the form of ‘my mom baked cookies for us today!’) and not once did it ever become an issue. We were always super aware of allergies in our school (it was common knowledge what allergy everyone in class had to foodstuffs, and we were completely peanut-free for the entirety of the school as well). We’d share them, and otherwise snack on them while we did our work, and that’s all because our teachers LET us.