I love teaching. One of my favorite parts of teaching 7th grade last year was recording some of the crazy things they'd say or do and sending the lists to my immediate family. I would laugh so hard at those funny little students and their approaches to science...ah, the good old days! I may even share some of those from last year on the blog sometime.
A sad thing about teaching at this community college is that there are fewer of those occasions full of fantastic quotes and experiences (or if they're there, they mostly make me sad about this place and these poor kids) but this last week we had some true gems. I had my Intro to Biology and Human Ecology classes do final presentations for the last day of class, and so here we go.
Introduction to Biology - the assignment was to do a 3-5 minute group presentation on an organ system of the body. Basic info about it, 3 fun or interesting facts about it, what things can go wrong with it, etc.
-The group that did the digestive system starts listing their fun facts. Then... "And fun fact number three is that once my horse had a stomach tumor!! And it weighed 8 pounds! Hey, does that count as two fun facts?"
-The lymphatic system group consistently referred to lymph nodes as "lymph noids" the entire time. Noids. As in the Noid from Domino's Pizza back in the day.
-"The average human body contains enough bones to make a complete skeleton."
-The skeletal system presenter proudly points to the scapula (shoulder blade) of a skeleton and says, "THESE, you guys, THESE are the clavicles!" (False. The clavicle is the collarbone.)
-"Hey, do you think pirates suffer from arrrrrrrrthritis?"
Human Ecology - this was a bigger group project where they were trying to convince the class to agree with them on a hot-button issue relating to humans and ecology. They were not allowed to lie to do this, there was a paper and research involved, etc. etc. They further had to fill out a form that evaluated their performance as a group where they got to comment if they felt that any member of their group didn't do their share of work. Quotes below come from either their presentations, papers, or self-evaluations.
-A girl puts up a poster for her presentation which says this (and only this): "PETA. Sexist hypocrites or animal rights organization?" (Ah, I love my job where this happens.)
-PETA girl proceeds to give each class member a paper on which an ad for PETA has been printed. (Be advised that many of PETA's posters are rather sketchy. Some are more than rather sketchy. Now we all have one of our very own.) "Sorry, guys, if I don't have enough for you. I got kicked out of the library for printing this stuff so I didn't get them all." And then, lucky us, we got to keep our sketchy PETA ads as a memento! (Spoiler: they appear to be sexist hypocrites after all.)
-Preserving the Bengal Tiger presentation: "When at the Knoxville zoo, I seen Bengal tigers starve. I seen 'em starve from no food and starve from no water." (At the zoo? Maybe they didn't happen to have any food left when you passed their enclosure...? Or maybe the zoo is actively killing them. I hear their pelts are valuable.)
-Bengal Tiger paper (which was 8 pages long instead of 3) had a compelling concluding paragraph: "In conclusion, our opinion is very useful because it shows that the information that we presented on Bengal Tigers is that they should have a really good home and not have to lose it also should have plenty of food and water and everything else that should be provided for them."
-A self and group evaluation: "I was really stuttering, sorry."
-One of the Bengal tiger self and group evaluation: "I feel like we did really well because you always try to come to a tiger's rescue at all times no matter what the situation is."
-The anti-vax group presentation did not contain a single fact about vaccinations. I'm not even sure if it was anti-vaccination or just anti-having-required-vaccinations. Either way, nothing they said was true. (I'm hanging my head in science teacher shame.) However, they had an amazingly compelling presentation, which is, I suppose, one of the advantages to avoiding actual research.
-The final sentences in the euthanasia paper: "Doctors do not create lives therefore it should be illegal for them to take lives! The Bible says 'thou shalt not kill' so lets' be LIFE SAVERS not life takers!" (They did pass out Life Savers to the class for their presentation.)
Don't students just make you smile sometimes?
