Politics

My students have been pretty interested in this whole election thing. ....at least they've been interested since yesterday when the school librarian talked to them about it. They keep asking each other who they're going to vote for. Then they give each other high fives if they both said the same person. They're bonding. I think.

Their political views (or those of their parents) have gone so far as to change what is right and wrong when it comes to important stuff, like math learnding.

Today I was giving them a "test". (I use that term lightly because, in my opinion, it was a complete waste of time on the school district's part. In fact, more than being a waste of time, it's actually a detriment to time. Not only does it keep me from doing more important things with my class, it actually decreases the learning in my room. Did you hear that school district? It's DECREASING LEARNING! Anyways...) In the test there was a picture of a row of elephants and donkeys in a pattern. The question asked "Which comes next in the pattern?"
Me, being the bonehead teacher that I was, decided to disrupt their concentration in figuring out the answer to inform them that the donkey and the elephant were symbols used by the presidential candidates and the groups they belonged to. After I told when which candidate went with which animal, I noticed several of them changing their answer to the symbol that represented their political choice. Eh, they don't get to vote, so at least they got to vote in their own special way.

The confusion mounts...
While we were having a discussion about the election (this one wasn't during the test), I asked my kids if they knew who the current president was. After getting a few responses of "George Washington!" and "George Lincoln!" I told them it was George W. Bush. I explained that we called him George W. Bush because his dad was also George Bush and he was a president before him.
I heard one of my students say "Hey, I'm named after my uncle, so I should be Joseph W."