Below are some kids that deserve medals for their brilliance. Teachers are always asking us stupid questions, sometimes they deserve stupid answers:
Posts Tagged ‘Teachers’
Sea Monsters 3D
Friday, September 5th, 2008Review
We have had 3D movies for years. You sit down in the cinema, put on those horrible multi coloured cardboard glasses and come out with a headache and sore eyes. What is so different about the ‘special’ 3D movie houses? Everything!
In South Africa Ster-Kinekor has launched 3D movie houses in our three major provinces and as been screening movies from Hannah Montana’s concert to the more recent Journey to the centre of the earth. It has taken me this long to get into a 3D movie house and I was not disappointed.
Instead of the usual cardboard glasses you get plastic glasses which look like some really cheap sunglasses. They do not however work as sunglasses, as the packaging so cleverly points out, so don’t get too excited. The movie house is specially designed for 3D movies. It has a different screen and different projector. In fact there is no film reel, it’s all digital.
But what you really want to know is if it’s as good as they claim. The picture quality is amazing; there is no need for pointless mucking about with 3D effects. It actually feels like you are in the movie. It feels as if the people are standing with you and that things are flying out at you.
We were treated to the latest 3D movie being released on the 12th of September, Sea Monsters. The cinematography was stunning. When the sea monsters jump out of the water it’s breathtaking. It feels real, shots of simple sunsets come alive and when looking into the distance it seems as if somebody cut a hole in the wall and you have a crystal clear image of the outside world. In one scene a wall is blown up and brick and debris fly right out and past you.
But it isn’t all roses and butterflies for Sea Monsters. In fact, the only reason you should see it is because it’s in 3D. The National Geographic feature is, as usual, full of complete nonsense. They use their circular reasoning to date bones and promote the usual evolution theories. If that doesn’t bother you, then this movie is worth seeing. Don’t expect a heart worming story; expect a science lesson – but one that will knock your socks off.
Teachers – this movie is for you. Take your kids in and watch them reach out for the life like creatures and giggle with excitement as fish swim all around them. This movie, if nothing else, is the perfect school fieldtrip.
A Boy & Math
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
A ten-year-old boy was failing math. His parents tried everything from tutors to hypnosis, but to no avail. Finally, at the insistence of a family friend, they decided to enrol their son in a private Catholic school.
After the first day, the boy’s parents were surprised when he walked in after school with a stern, focused and very determined expression on his face, and went right past them straight to his room, where he quietly closed the door. For nearly two hours he toiled away in his room – with math books strewn about his desk and the surrounding floor. He emerged long enough to eat, and after quickly cleaning his plate, went straight back to his room, closed the door, and worked feverishly at his studies until bedtime.
This pattern continued ceaselessly until it was time for the first quarter report card. The boy walked in with his report card — unopened — laid it on the dinner table and went straight to his room. Cautiously, his mother opened it, and to her amazement, she saw a bright red “A” under the subject of MATH.
Overjoyed, she and her husband rushed into their son’s room, thrilled at his remarkable progress. “Was it the nuns that did it?,” the father asked. The boy only shook his head and said, “No.” “Was it the one-on-one tutoring? The peer-mentoring?” “No.” “The textbooks? The teachers? The curriculum?”
“Nope,” said the son. “On that first day, when I walked in the front door and saw that guy they nailed to the ‘plus sign,’ I just knew they meant business!”
Why English teachers die young
Tuesday, February 5th, 2008
Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual similes and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year’s winners.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.
3. 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 of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. 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 machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had a eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. 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.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River .
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. 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.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
