KELLYq & a: Teacher Needs Her Coffee, Children

My love affair with coffee started in high school. My senior year, I made a full thermos every day to get me through 1st period Calculus (w/ applications). In college, I hardly drank coffee -- I slept 9-10 hours a night, on average, so I rarely needed it. However, now that I'm back on the 5:30 am bandwagon, I desperately need coffee to get me through my day.

My students are well aware of this. I have a coffee machine in my room (it is unbearably noisy at inopportune times, like when they are in the middle of a state-standard test) and keep cream in the fridge on my floor. One of the unspoken goals in my classroom from August - December is to teach my children that I love coffee, and am cranky when I don't have any. This way, they will buy me coffee-related gifts come holiday time.

Recently, I was teaching a lesson on tone, and I asked my 2nd period to write monologues where they pretended to be a character and wrote to show emotion. I would say that over half of my kids pretended to be me, and wrote about how I was angry at them for breaking my coffee machine, spilling my coffee, drinking all my coffee when I wasn't looking, etc.

Last year, I got Seventeen Starbucks Gift Cards, totaling about 200 bucks. So yeah. It works pretty well.

This week, I'm at Outdoor Ed with my students. (Remember? I went last year, too) The coffee there is usually quite shitty. We'll see how many students make it back alive.

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Comments

[D.C.]

I almost died at outdoor ed! Not from any stupid teacher, but I think I got left behind in one of those death-march/hikes with a twisted ankle.

[EmGusk]

I almost died at outdoor ed toooo! they gave me uncooked beef and i puked.

[The Mayor]

I like that idea about coffee presents. I wonder what/if I'll get for Christmas?