EDUCATION AT ITS BEST

My 5 Year Old Students
by allen 31. July 2009 22:32
My five-year-old students are learning to read. Yesterday one of them pointed at a picture in a zoo book and said, "Look at this! It's a frickin' elephant!"

I took a deep breath, then asked "What did you call it?"

"It's a frickin' elephant! It says so on the picture!"

And so it does: "A f r i c a n E l e p h a n t".

Hooked on phonics! Ain't it wonderful?

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Real Quotes From Parents Notes (Excuses) to School
by allen 20. July 2009 21:35
These are REAL notes written by parents in a Tennessee school district. (Spellings have been left intact.)

1-- MY SON IS UNDER A DOCTOR'S CARE AND SHOULD NOT TAKE PE TODAY. PLEASE EXECUTE HIM.

2-- PLEASE EXKUCE LISA FOR BEING ABSENT SHE WAS SICK AND I HAD HER SHOT

3-- DEAR SCHOOL: PLEASE ECSC's JOHN BEING ABSENT ON JAN. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 AND ALSO 33.

4-- PLEASE EXCUSE GLORIA FROM JIM TODAY. SHE IS ADMINISTRATING.

5-- PLEASE EXCUSE ROLAND FROM P.E. FOR A FEW DAYS. YESTERDAY HE FELL OUT OF A TREE AND MISPLACED HIS HIP.

6-- JOHN HAS BEEN ABSENT BECAUSE HE HAD TWO TEETH TAKEN OUT OF HIS FACE.

7-- CARLOS WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE HE WAS PLAYING FOOTBALL. HE WAS HURT IN THE GROWING PART.

8-- MEGAN COULD NOT COME TO SCHOOL TODAY BECAUSE SHE HAS BEEN BOTHERED BY VERY CLOSE VEINS.

9-- CHRIS WILL NOT BE IN SCHOOL CUS HE HAS AN ACRE IN HIS SIDE.

10-- PLEASE EXCUSE RAY FRIDAY FROM SCHOOL. HE HAS VERY LOOSE VOWELS.

11-- PLEASE EXCUSE PEDRO FROM BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD (DIAHRE, DYREA, DIREATHE), THE SH**S. NOTE: [WORDS IN ( )'s WERE CROSSED OUT. (Love it!)

12-- PLEASE EXCUSE TOMMY FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD DIARRHEA, AND HIS BOOTS LEAK.

13-- IRVING WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE HE MISSED HIS BUST.

14-- PLEASE EXCUSE JIMMY FOR BEING. IT WAS HIS FATHER'S FAULT. {You know, this could be legit!}

15-- I KEPT BILLIE HOME BECAUSE SHE HAD TO GO CHRISTMAS SHOPPING BECAUSE DON'T KNOW WHAT SIZE SHE WEAR.

16-- PLEASE EXCUSE JENNIFER FOR MISSING SCHOOL YESTERDAY. WE FORGOT TO GET THE SUNDAY PAPER OFF THE PORCH, AND WHEN WE FOUND IT MONDAY. WE THOUGHT IT WAS SUNDAY.

17-- MY DAUGHTER WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY BECAUSE SHE WAS TIRED. SHE SPENT A WEEKEND WITH THE MARINES. {I absolutely LOVE that one!}

18-- PLEASE EXCUSE JASON FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. HE HAD A COLD AND COULD NOT BREED WELL.

19-- PLEASE EXCUSE MARY FOR BEING ABSENT YESTERDAY. SHE WAS IN BED WITH GRAMPS.

20-- GLORIA WAS ABSENT YESTERDAY AS SHE WAS HAVING A GANGOVER.

21-- PLEASE EXCUSE BRENDA. SHE HAS BEEN SICK AND UNDER THE DOCTOR.

22-- MARYANN WAS ABSENT DECEMBER 11-16, BECAUSE SHE HAD A FEVER, SORETHROAT, HEADACHE AND UPSET STOMACH. HER SISTER WAS ALSO SICK, FEVER AN SORE THROAT, HER BROTHER HAD A LOW GRADE FEVER AND ACHED ALL OVER. I WASN'T THE BEST EITHER SORE THROAT AND FEVER. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING GOING AROUND, HER FATHER EVEN GOT HOT LAST NIGHT.

Now we know why parents are screaming for
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Actual Analogies from High School Essays
by allen 21. June 2009 01:30
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two other sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a Guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one those boxes with a pinhole in it.

She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't

McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph

They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant and she was the East River.

Even in his last years, Grandpappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

"Oh, Jason, take me!"; she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on $1-a-beer night.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame. Maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

The knife was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on
the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

She was as easy as the TV Guide crossword.

Her eyes were like limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleanser.

She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs.

Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band tightened.

It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

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