8 billion people

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

When I started teaching Human Geography in September, we talked about the world population and that it was expected to turn over 8 billion people in mid-November. It was official today – 12 years after we got to 7 billion, we hit 8 billion. Wow.

Since it seemed pretty monumental, I thought I should put it up on the smart board. I have to get all my technology ducks in a row before school (preferably when no one is watching me fumble around), so I worked on creating a slide. Today fail. I couldn’t get it big enough to look good. I couldn’t make colors. Lame. So, I decided to just write it with a marker. One terrific 11th grader was already there. She gave me encouragement when my zeros where lopsided. We were talking about the billions of people and having a time, and I said I thought the zeros needed faces. She vehemently agreed. I said each person that came into the room would be given the opportunity to make a face. She gamely dug in.

The next person who came in was invited to make a face. He looked at. He asked a couple questions. He politely declined. Next guy in was all about it. His girlfriend came in a few minutes later and she was excited. Bing bing bing bing bing and our zeros were full of faces. I could not love more how no one took any time to plan – just walked up and drew a face. Bam. Done. No one made a negative comment about any of the drawings. Everyone talked about the world population. Eleventh graders are awesome.

My first two ninth grade classes were quite interested in the 8 million people. BILLION! Oh. Billion? YES! That’s more, right? Yes, that’s more. We guessed how many years it had been since 7 billion. I had guesses from one year to 8 billion years. (ooof) It was fun.

Then fifth hour came. Fifth hour is not fun. Fifth hour made fun of the faces. Fifth hour said why do we care how many people there are? How do they know there are 8 billion? They don’t know. It doesn’t matter how many people there are (obviously EVERYTHING we have done this trimester has settled firmly in their brains) (SARCASM). Mid-way through fifth hour is lunch. I must stop several minutes early so they can retrieve their phones from the phone hotel, or they literally start screaming at me. I have to stand in front of the door until the bell rings or they literally run away. Two boys that I know quite well from last year came up and said I should make the 8 into a snowman. I said I had considered that – that it looked like a snowman to me – but if I messed up, I would mess up my pretty-darned-good circles and I doubted I could make them again. They suggested I just make a hat. It was actually pretty cute how enthusiastic they were. We talked about making hats for all the numbers. I said I couldn’t really draw hats. They suggested party hats, because they are triangles and pretty easy.

The bell rang and I dodged out of the way to avoid a Mufasa fate, then immediately went and drew party hats. I skipped all the work I should have been doing to be ready for the afternoon that I usually do during lunch and drew party hats.

The looks on both of their faces when they came back was worth a few minutes of disorganization later. They are two very bright spots in 5th hour. The rest of 5th hour said the hats looked stupid. SEVERAL people complained that snowmen have three circles and my two circle snowman was stupid. I said Frosty had two circles. Even though it was no chromebook day, three chromebooks came out to research Frosty. I said no, you need to do the thing we are doing. They said no, we must research Frosty. If it wasn’t 5th hour – who really never, ever listen to anything I say – I would have been happy to research Frosty, but ick, 5th hour. They showed me pictures of Frosty and proved that he is not a two-snowball snowman. No wonder they can’t do 9th grade work – they can’t tell if a snowman is made from two or three snowballs. Seriously.

Today was supposed to be my last day with these ninth graders. My co-teacher comes back on Wednesdays, and the trimester ends Tuesday and off they go – never to come back this year. But my co-teacher needs another day of rest, so I get one more day.

Wheeeeeee.

We had our friends, the Wickerts, over for game night tonight (supposed to be a triumphant night of celebrating done with 9th grade but darn). We made the beer cheese soup. It was okay. Not great by any means. Too beery. I think the men liked it, even though neither of them is a beer drinker. We set the table with matching everything and drank water out of fancy glasses. It seemed pretty darned special to be sitting at the table with other people – not in front of the TV by ourselves. We made a cheesecake that turned out weird, but okay. Overall, the table looked far better than the food tasted, but our friends kindly overlooked that and we had such good conversation. Because I like these people a lot, I put a bowl of HUNTER MIX out for them to snack on, and it was delicious. (They liked it.) They have been traveling (more than us!) and we didn’t come close to hearing all the tales. We played some games and laughed and have some new times on the calendar to see them again.

Friends are best, aren’t they? (So much better than 5th hour.)