Close encounters with a 3rd grade mind
My roommate Jill works for a book publisher in Boston, and on Friday she brought me a present: a book from her company called “Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind” by Phillip Done. I haven’t been able to put it down since Friday. It is the perfect picture of life with 8-year olds!
I am lucky enough to have one of the greatest jobs in the world: spending 5 days a week with over 50 kids. When you live a life with eight-year olds, not a day (or even an hour) can pass without something ridiculous, funny, cute, or absurd escaping their mouths. At the end of a class the other day, some of my kids were asking me about the marathon, and their responses were priceless! It may be a rip off of Phillip Done’s title, but I just can’t help it: I have close encounters with 3rd grade minds every single day.
On running for charity:
“So if you don’t finish the race, you’ll get cancer?”
“When you run the race, people are going to throw money at you, and you have to stop and pick it up, right? That seems like it will slow you down.”
“If you don’t win, do you have to give all the cancer money back?”
“Oh, I get it! Your name is Ms. God because you are such a nice person! Like helping the cancer people and stuff!”
On running itself:
“You love to jog don’t you Ms. G? I can tell by those mad crazy pants you always wear after school.”
“Ms. Gott, I know why you like them pretzels so much that you always eat…’cuz they have that healthy stuff in them, you know…gingivitis. And you need that for all your running.”
“Yeah, I ran a marathon once, in P.E. class. It was hard, it was like 10 laps around the gym.”
student: “Ms. G, are you like those Olympics people that are famous for running?”
Ms. Gott: “No…those people work really hard. It’s basically their job to train for the Olympics. They might practice like 8 or 10 hours a day.”
student: “Well, if you already have a job, why do you run then?”
Ms. Gott: “Oh I just run for fun. I like it.”
student: [long pause]. “huh. I didn’t know you was so weird.”
And the totally absurd/cute/what were they thinking:
“Ms. Gott, who is going to teach us next week while you runnin’ in the Olympics?”
“Run the best Ms. G. You the bestest teacher. So if you be a good teacher, you can be a good runner too.”
“Will you win everybody? And then you can show us your golden medal in school?”
(and my favorite student quote ever, overheard in the school lobby just before the marathon last year):
“Hey Mom, that’s my teacher Ms. Gott! She gonna be running in the world series next week!”
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