Guest Post: It Isn't Spring Break Without A Disembodied Arm!

 So my first ever guest blogger is the lovely Erin, who visited me at my crazy house and lived to tell the tale! You should all check out her blog because she's amazing AND she travels like you WISH you traveled. Leave her some looooove!

Hi! I'm Erin over at Heart In Ireland! I'm taking over Lucy's corner of the internet for today and hopefully I can be as entertaining as she is. I had the fabulous pleasure a few weeks ago to meet Lucy and her adorable family (which was so much fun!). So of course while we were catching up about life in general and sharing more stories than we blog about of course the topic headed towards our jobs. I've taught high school history and most recently I've been working high school leadership conferences and as you know Lucy is an English teacher and well interacting with high school students often can be pretty entertaining. So we were sharing out stories and laughing about how funny & crazy teaching is and while I feel I could write a hilarious blog about each day in the classroom (buuut probably not the most professional thing i could do)we  both mentioned leaving out many funny stories from school. So this got me thinking about some of the funnier things I've had happen to me teaching and I'm going to share one of my favorite moments from last spring. 

So I'm a huge history dork, and I love history. I was a first year teacher, quite young and had a pretty good relationship with my students and they respected me. So it is the week before Spring Break and my students are getting excited about 6 days off of school and it finally getting warm. So they were talking about their plans (most of them included staying home) so they finally ask me what I'm doing and well I was doing a Civil War battlefield week in Virginia and no way as I letting them know that - as I know they would have a field day with that. So I manage to avoid the conversation and continue teaching my lessons on the Civil War. A few days later on the last day before break they are discussing plans again and one of my sophomore students goes "Ohhh yea Miss T is totally going to MTV Spring Break - crazy parties and the beach. She needs to after dealing with us. That's why she isn't telling us." So after laughing at their suggestion I decide to tell them what I was really doing. So I've never seen a class of students laugh that hard as when I tell them I'm going to different Civil War sites and I'm really excited to see the history I was super excited to play with history for a week. After the laughter subsided one student was all "Miss T - come on, I've expected more from you. You are young, go out and be crazy, not my Grandma." So I had to laugh at that comment and with a few minutes left in class just brush it off. So I had a blast seeing different Civil War sites and learning the history and taking it all in and taking hundreds of photos. 

Gettysburg

Welcome back to school on Monday after a week off of school and I had just finished my unit on the Civil War (and even had brought my Civil War tests to grade while on the trip) and wanted to review before moving on to Reconstruction. So I decide to use some of the photos I took on my trip and show a slide show of pictures for the day we get back as review.As they are walking into class they are joking around - how was the Civil War?  Wooo  As I'm talking about these places firsthand and showing them the pictures and their impact on the war the same student raises his hand and goes " Wow, for as dorky as you  are - I wish we could have gone on your Spring Break - that actually looks like a lot of fun"

Appomattox Courthouse

So while the rest of the year I got made fun of for seeing Stonewall Jackson's arm or Gettysburgh as my spring break I knew I did my job and made history fun and tried to bring personal stories and it relevant to my sophomores. And just little moments like that make me love being a teacher!

Stonewall Jackson's Arm!