Oh boy, being a high school student teacher at age twenty-two, while looking like a high schooler myself, has its challenges for sure! One of those is when a typical teenage boy writes something flirty on the whiteboard for me to see after class.
“Miss Donnelly is bae.” This is what my whiteboard says after a class discussion on elements of poetry. ‘Bae’ is a teenager acronym for ‘Before Anyone Else,’ a goofy nickname often used for a significant other. In this case, it’s a joke, but a definite (yet still secretive) attempt at flirting. Eleventh graders say (and write) the darndest things–this made me chuckle on a post-class afternoon.