SCENE 1, INTERIOR. MORNING, CLASSROOM. The students are completing an assignment on the Promethean board. One student punctuates a portion of the incorrect sentence and then passes on the pen to another child to fix something else. The teacher is observing from the reading table as he is approached by a fifth-grade boy.
JOEY: Hey, Mr. Z?
TEACHER: What, Joey?
[The boy leans in a little bit].
JOEY: Can I go to the bathroom?
[The teacher shakes his head as he looks at the boy—he recalls the incorrect usage of this particular word –the same mistake he used to make all the time as a kid and recollects the response HIS teachers always gave to him].
TEACHER: I don’t know, Joey, can you?
[The boy looks at the teacher, unfazed].
JOEY: Yeah, I can prove it…you wanna see?
TEACHER: [Surprised]. Uh, no, not really.
[Pause].
JOEY: So, can I go?
TEACHER: Yeah, I guess you can…
Fade to black.
6 comments:
It would have been more fun to see what he would have done if you said yes.....
I used to (and probably still do) make that same mistake and my teachers would say the same thing as you. It would embarrass me to death! Junior High! Trying to be invisible and then a teacher asks you that in front of the entire class.......MORTIFYING! Oh that I had had the wits of a Joey....
I so remember my English teacher saying this to me..."Can you?" in her deep voice. The sound of her voice still echoes in my head to this day!
Yay, it's my moment!
I can't tell you how exciting for me it was to witness that. I kept thinking, "Is this a MWJ?" Then you reached for a paper to write it down and I thought "Holy cow! I'm here for a MWJ!" I was honored to watch it unfold.
Remind me to tell you the rest of my MWJ story...
Why didn't you let him demonstrate? I'm sure there was a can or jar somewhere... ;)
Too funny.
Oh my goodness. I had this exact conversation with my sixth grade teacher, and I'm not kidding you. So funny.
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