Spelling Bees and Rainbow Cakes

Before we do anything, can we please take a moment and do a happy dance because today was my last day of school until 2011.  Shoot yeah!

Okay, so let's back it up.  My eleventh graders have their American Literature end of course test on January 5.  They return to school on January 4.  I have many things to say about this, but it wouldn't be prudent to post those things on the world wide web.  I actually like having a job.

So, anyway, we've been doing EOCT preparation stuff/review all week.  And here's something about EOCT review: it sucks.  It's dry and boring and it's tough to make it fun.  I wanted to do something fun for the students,  kind of a Christmas break send-off/good luck on your EOCT thing.  I decided that that fun thing was a spelling bee.

"What do we get if we win?" the students asked.

I responded [obviously without thinking], "A cake."

Shoot.  As if I didn't have enough to do this week, I had to go and commit myself to making a cake?  What a stupid thing to say.

And even more stupid was when I decided that,  hell, if I was going to make them a cake, I was going to make them an awesome cake.  And I'd never made the rainbow cake. 

So I made the rainbow cake.

They LOVED it.  Apparently, Savannah's eleventh graders aren't big Martha Stewart or mommy blog readers, so they didn't even know that the rainbow cake was a thing.  Hell yeah!

There were oohs and ahhhhs and screams of "That cake is awesome!"  And I'd be a damned liar if it didn't admit that it made my chest puff out a little.  (The chest puffing could also have to do with the fact that I ate four entire meals by the end of today's school day.  There was puffing all over.)

So we ate cake, and talked and laughed and spelled words.  I spent a good portion of the lesson focusing on commonly misused words, so I'd say something like "Put that paper over there.  Spell there."  And then they'd spell the correct form of the word.  Not terribly complex, I thought.  Until. . .

Me:  There are a lot of cliques at this school.  Spell cliques, you know, like exclusive groups of people.

Student:  C-L-I-T-S.

Me: Um, no.  That's something very different.  Moving on!

I guess we've got a little more studying to do.