He did it.  He was so proud of himself.  Well, that’s not saying much, but the point is the first day of school had come and gone.   What’s that?  You’d like to know what high school is like these days?  …if he has time?  Let me ask him.  He said he’s on his way out the door, but for you “anything.”

Oh okay, I get it.  He wants me to let you know he’s mumbling inaudibly.  Forgive him, he was just attempting to demonstrate what he experienced all day today.  He’s telling me that no kids speak loud enough to hear.  Yeah, it’s a joke that just doesn’t work so well in writing, but trust me, it was effective in person.

He apologizes for the lame joke, and thinks you’d be interested to know that today’s 9th graders were born in 1999.  Shocking.  Actually, that year is super familiar to me.  Oh, I know.  That’s the year The Matrix came out!  Now he wants me to let you know that he’s not joking about the mumbling.  He says “literally, only 2 out of 99” 9th graders spoke loud enough for him to hear.  And with this new touchy-feely way of teaching and thinking about them, he says he actually felt like it was inappropriate for him to ask them to speak up–like it was too harsh and might hurt their feelings.  Crazy.

Besides the fact that they need a class on confidence before they proceed, he doesn’t think that you’d be surprised by much else.  For example, the school has a dress code.  One rule is no blue jeans or dark blue jeans.  He’s telling me that he mentioned to a student that her jeans today seemed to be dark blue.  But then he confessed that they might be okay because they were so dark they might be black.  He says his wavering prompted a young man to tell the class his dark blue jeans were black.  Sheesh, give ’em an inch….

Okay, he’s telling me that he has to get going now.  He really would like to share more, but he literally couldn’t hear anything.  You should see this, he cares so much for you that as he’s getting further away he’s raising his voice so I can still hear him.  He’s yelling from a distance now.  Okay, I think he just said it was just seven 50-minute periods of low-talking.  At least he doesn’t look stressed.