Like Mother, Like Daughter

When I was younger, I looked a lot like my mom.

People would comment on it all the time. "Wow, you sure look like your mom," they would say. "Thanks!" I would reply (At least, that is how I would reply 1% of the time. The other 99% of the time my shyness would prevent me from making eye-contact with the complement-giver, let alone speak to them...but my debilitating shyness is not the point of this post so I shall move on).

Then, somewhere around 6th grade or so, I started to look more and more like my dad. "Wow, you sure look like your dad," people would say. "Thanks a lot," I would reply, my voice dripping with sarcasm. Why sarcasm? Because his name is Homely. You would be sarcastic too if people repeatedly told you that you looked very similar to a man whose name is a antonym for "good looking."

But even though our physical similarities are not as obvious as they once were, my mom and I still have an awful lot in common. One of the biggest commonalities is the fact that we both teach 7th grade English.

She is Mrs. H at school for 7th and 8th graders in my old home town...

...and I am Miss H. in my new hometown, about two hours away.

As 7th grade English teachers, we have a lot in common...and not just the fact we like too stand outside our rooms and waste valuable teaching time waiting for opportunities to have our photos taken by our name plates. Our classrooms and lesson plans are also very similar.

Mrs. H has a basketball hoop in her room for the kidlets to shoot on...

...as does Miss H. (although mine also doubles as a conjunction sign holder. I'm all about multitasking...a skill I learned from my mom!) .

Mrs. H has her podium decorated for the Halloween season...

...and Miss H has hers decorated for the Autumn season (because she is too lazy to change it every month. Plus, the kids started getting wise to me last year when they noticed that I had time to redecorate my podium on a regular basis, but not to grade and return their papers in a timely manner, i.e. during the same quarter they handed them in) .

Here is a fun similarity:

Mrs. H had a fake cemetery set up on her classroom wall with a creepy skeleton banner...

...and Miss H set up a fake cemetery on the stage under the creepy lights.

The morbid decorations did serve purposes.

One of the activities the kidlets in Mrs. H's class did in October was to have a funeral for "dead words" or words that have been over-used to death. The kidlets picked a word and made a headstone for it before the mass funeral.

Meanwhile, the kidlets in Miss H's class were combing the fake cemetery with casket-hunt forms and pencils so that they could learn more about various science fiction and horror authors.

It's kind of comforting to know that, even though our bone structure and hair color aren't as similar as they once were, our classrooms still share a striking resemblance.

Of course, there were some differences.

My mom's lesson allowed the kids to let their creative juices flow as they decorated headstones and wrote clever things on them. . .

...while my lesson included an opportunity for the kidlets to practice their musical talents by singing a twist on a classic song...

(Literary history, I am doing it. Lit-er-ar-y his-tor-y.

And the reasons why I am doing it are very clear to me.

My teacher needs some quiet time,

so she won't have to bury me.

That's the reason, I am -doing it, lit-er-ar-y his-tory. )

It is kind of odd to think that, should a 7th grader move from her/his big city middle school to my small town junior high, the only change that kidlet would have to make in English class would be switching the title in front of "H."

Oh, wait. I guess they would also have to get used to having Miss H whack their desks with swimming noodles and force then to take a burping naked mole rat to the library as a hall pass...

But that shouldn't be too hard to fix. Christmas is coming up and I hear Kings is having a sale on swimming noodles and stuffed cartoon characters who make rude bodily function-themed noises when you squeeze their paws...

And the best part will be when our kids become pen pals next semester so that they can practice their friendly-letter-writing-skills. I can't wait for all of the similarities between Miss H and Mrs. H's classrooms to mess with the kidlet's cute little heads. My mom is too nice to want to mess with them though, so I must get that from my dad.