Scrabble

Seventh period, the last of the day, is what's called a literacy lab. It's a remedial class for kids who scored very low on some standardized language test. Our lab consists of five kids - three girls and two boys - and we try to spend some time each class working on some of the basic structures of English. Some of the kids do better with the basics than others.

True story:

Today, after the lesson, I left them with a half an hour in which to read. Two of the students - both of the boys - asked me if we could spend the time playing Scrabble. It's one of my favorite games, so I said "sure!"

One of the boys is a little frustrating to play with, though, because he insists on asking me if a collection of letters is a word. "Mrs. Chili, is 'g-a-m' a word? Is 'l-o-c' a word?" He does this all the time. He did this today.

We were about fifteen minutes into the game when this boy turns to me and says "Mrs. Chili, is 'y-o-u' a word?"

I looked at the boy and said "ask me again?" Which he does. I had ALL I could do to keep a straight face.

"Sweetie," I said, "if you don't know, you can't use the word."

He didn't.