What's cool in middle school?

Apparently, family trees.

            So in Spanish we were doing a unit on family members in, of course, Spanish. As a project, Mrs. Z had us create a family tree and name the members Spanish names.

            Recipe for disaster, as any seasoned teacher would expect, but Mrs. Z is a less-than-seasoned teacher, and rather oblivious to the goings-on at school, so she went right ahead and told us to go for it. We did. Today we presented, telling the class all about the various names, ages, favorite activities, and home locations of all the family members. It may seem innocent enough, but this is hardly so.

            Pretty soon, kids had to know how to say step-step-stepbrother, or fourth cousin six times removed, or how to explain why they had two abuelos and no abuelas. Read into that what you like. But basically, chaos reigned. As you can imagine, little education was received in Spanish class, but it was certainly fun to watch poor Mrs. Z as her class dissolved into a horde of obnoxious middle schoolers with cell phones out, texting, with cokes in hand.

            Pretty soon, one kid, D.O., tried to actually present. Now, you've got to know D.O. to see the humor in this. You probably remember her from last What's cool in middle school, with the puppet shows. Of course, she spent ten minutes ranting on about her ridiculous cousin, Porky, and another fifteen on her aunt, Porky's mom. In English. I considered politely informing her that we were in Spanish class, but honestly, I was enjoying myself waaaaaayyy too much for that. As one of Riverwood's best presenters, D.O. enjoys infamy for being great at long rants, in her incredibly high speech-giving voice.

             Halfway  through her presentation, a letter came for D.O.

            "Oooooooooh, the talent show! Did I make it, did I make it? Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, I didn't make it! Lemonpies!" D.O. screeched. Then she promptly reverted back to her speech giving self.

            Then there was the clip art. Oh, the clip art. Clip art here, clip art there, clip art with Spanish captions, clip art with English captions, clip art of food, of schools, of homework, and of tigers (no, not LSU. Just a coincidence.) By the end of the school day, that clip art was just about ready to explode off the edge of D.O.'s project and devour all the laughing students, and some were afraid it would.

            I must report on the lack of order and in some cases, lack of sanity and basic personal hygiene of the students in Mrs. Z's class. If I were a parent, I would be spending my time writing a stern letter to the school district, but as I'm not, I'm writing this instead. Good luck, parents.

By Jessica, the viola player.