Like Wifi

The other day, I was singing loudly during one of my classes.  This is not an infrequent occurrence, by the way.  I sing and dance often in my classes.  My students are used to it by now.  They just roll their eyes and continue working until I sing myself out.  Sometimes I make up songs about activities we are doing in class, sometimes I sing Disney princess songs (Gracie’s fault), and sometimes – when they are REALLY good and deserve a treat – I rap for them.

I submit the following video as evidence. I teach using video instruction in my classroom, and this is my most recent video where I spontaneously broke out into song. You laugh, but ALL my students said they remembered this on test day. BAM!

Last week, I was singing a lovely Taylor Swift ballad in class and one of my students said to me, “Whoa, Mrs. Brown!  You’re dropping bars like wifi!”

Now, being a thirty-something adult, I had to stop and ponder this statement.  How does one “drop bars?”  And how is that related to wifi?

My students also know that I am slow on the urban-slang of teenagers, and so they always give me a second for their statements to process inside my prehistoric, ancient brain.  This kid knew to wait for it.  He stood there grinning while I processed each word of this odd statement in my mind.  This one was taking me longer than others.  My RAM must be running low.

So, I thought…

And I thought…

And I thought…  “Dropping bars like wifi…”

AND THEN THE LIGHT BULB CLICKED ON AND ANGELS SANG!  I understood!  His slang translated into: “You are singing.”

Middle school lingo really should be studied be sociologists and psychologists.  And probably toxicologists, too.

Once I understood, though, I could not help the educator in me, who shouted out, “YES, LUIS!  I AM dropping bars like wifi!  What a brilliant simile!  And metaphor!  And idiom!” and then I made the class pause and talk about metaphors and similes and idioms and figurative language and all those English things that make teachers so happy and students so violent.

That’ll teach them to make fun of my singing again…

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Editor’s Note:  These pictures seem very random and unrelated, but they aren’t.  These are pictures of me at school.  See how thematic I am in my blog posts?!

Editor’s Note Again:  That’s my friend, Jessica.  Isn’t she perty?????

Editor’s Note Again Again:  That’s a duck on my head.  It was hat day.  I wore a duck hat.  Quack. Quack.