Friday, December 04, 2009

Been a long time...

Wow - just remembered tonight that I still had this blog!

Silly story:
The other day in Earth Science class, I cracked a geode to show my students the crystals that grew inside. I used a hammer (borrowed from another teacher), wrapped the geode up in several layers of paper towel, and whacked away. Students were fairly impressed, and expressed appreciation that the hammer was for that activity and not something more violent (they haven't been behaving very well lately.)

After school, I was waiting in the hall for the teacher who owned the hammer - wanting to give it back to her before it got lost on my desk. The head PTB came by, and the following conversation took place:

HPTB: Lookin' dangerous there, Lowe.
Me: No worries - just used it to crack a geode today.
HPTB: Geode? What's that?
(I duck into my class to retrieve the geode to show him)
HPTB: Very cool. I hope you used goggles.
Me: No - but I wrapped it up in paper towels and stood far away from the kids.
HPTB: Well, I've known geode shards to come through paper towels.
(What? Two minutes ago, you didn't know what a geode was!)
HPTB: Bottom line? Always use protection, Lowe!

While always good advice - especially in the halls of a high school - this made me laugh.

Hammertime!!