Gems, all of them. Gems.

UH OH

"Ms. Moore, can I go to the bathroom?"

"We're about to take a test; can you wait?"

"I guess... but if it starts to smell bad in here, I'm gonna have to go."

As I was passing out the quizzes, this student held his hand up and said, "Just a minute."  Then a very concentrated look came over his face, and he seemed to be bracing himself.

Finally, I had to say, "Dude, if you have to go to the bathroom that badly, then just go."

His reply was, "What?... Oh no, I was just about to sneeze..."

What was I supposed to think?? At least the class got a laugh out of that one.


DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
On the board, I wrote the following words: red, happy, sad, long, short, funny, and nice.  The instructions I gave to students were to write more descriptive words for each, retaining the same meaning.  Then, once they had generated a more descriptive list, they were supposed to come up with even more descriptive words.  This was my favorite list of words, verbatim:

Red: really red, really bright red
Happy: super happy, really super happy
Sad: kinda sad, like super sad
Long: crazy long, really long (wait, would crazy long be more descriptive than really long?)
Short: stubby, my mom
Funny: really funny, super funny
Nice: really super nice, Ms. Moore (cuz she'll still give me credit for this assignment even though I was goofing off. It is almost Christmas)

Is it any wonder this student has yet to pass the state writing test? It's obvious that he is a literary genius. What a shame.

ORIGINALITY?

"Chris, I said your story had to be a page long."
"Really? This isn't good enough?"
"Considering you still have 10 lines on the bottom of your page, I'd say no."
"Can I borrow some scis--wait, I have some."

He then cut the bottom portion off his paper and handed it to me. If no other students had seen him, I might have let him get away with it.  But they did see, and I didn't want them following suit, so I made him rewrite it.  I'm a very nice teacher.