Kickball, Basketball, and...a Language Arts teacher?

I got to cover 6th/7th grade Girls P.E. today. That was interesting. I got a call during 1st period that I needed to cover the class during my planning, 6th period. I actually laughed. I laughed and said, "Are you kidding?" And the office lady kindly said, "No." Oh, man. So I nervously marched down to the gym a few minutes before the kids were to arrive, to figure out what the heck I was gonna do with them. Luckily I located the Boys' P.E. coach, and he told me what to do with them. They were to play this Kickball/Basketball combination game. They had played it before. It wasn't that bad at all. I just stood on the sidelines and watched. Actually, it ended up being easier than covering a Math class, since the P.E. class is predictable and pretty independent. No biggie.

A fun little anecdote: my pregnant girl (I really don't want to officially give her that nickname, since I'm still not absolutely sure she is) blew my mind today. She handed me her Author Report, since she was suspended when it was due. That in itself was a mind blower, since I honestly didn't think she'd have it. But she did. But there was one teensy weensy problem: I was reading the Final Draft of her report, and something looked funny. Not funny haha, funny strange. Her first paragraph was in different font than the rest of the paper, and it was in bold. And it was worded in collegiate terminology. I have a feeling she doesn't know what half of those words even mean. I sighed, and gently went over and asked her, "Did you really write this?", to which she replied without hesitation, "Yeah, I did. I remembered what you told me when I was writing the Rough Draft that I shouldn't copy word for word, so I didn't", to which I said, "but this looks like you copied and pasted from a website." She nodded and said, "I did, but I moved the sentences around, so they're in a different order." Oh my gracious. I smiled and said as calmly as I could, "Hon, that's still copying." My hubby thinks I should start a blog of just things kids have said to me, or at least in my presence. I'm working on that. For now, I'm gonna have her re-write the paper IN HER OWN WORDS, and tell her that next time it's a zero and a Referral for cheating. I'll let you know how that goes over.