MonkeyPants

Another One Bites The Dust.

My last class on Friday is pretty relaxed. We talk about the week, what’s going on in the kids’ lives, the paragraphs they’re working on. It’s a chance for all of us to decompress.

Today one of my students, who is in Grade 7, spent the day working on a project about Ancient Egypt. This included the time-honoured tradition of making models of human organs out of papier mache.

It also included a day of reality TV, this student’s first foray into it.

“Do you know Paris?” she asked.

“Paris the city?”

“No, Paris. She is very rich.”

I shudder inwardly. I knew it would happen sooner or later. “Yes, Paris Hilton.”

“We watched a show. She is looking for a BFF.” She looks to see if I understand such complicated slang.

I nod. “Best Friends Forever.”

“I know! Some people want to be her friend so much that they cry! Why?”

So we talked a little while about why some people would want to be famous, and how people can be famous for a lot of reasons, even just being super rich. My student doesn’t really understand why anyone would do moronic things just for publicity, or carry animals around in handbags. All she really understands is that people get on TV for totally non-meritorious reasons, and that’s kind of stupid.

That’s all I could explain.