The Office Returns

One of my students is pretty much obsessed with the TV show The Office. Whatever we talk about in class, there will be a direct relationship to an episode and he will share it with the whole class. Usually it starts with, "like that episode on The Office when <cast member> does such and such." I have to admit it's pretty hilarious and it's a good thing I'm a fan so I know what he's talking about! The other day he brought up a more obscure scene that I had totally forgotten about. This prompted the question, "Mike, how many times have you watched each episode??!" The response was given in the usual goofy chuckle, "Oh probably like five times or so."

Just to give you an idea of why it's so easy to make connections, here are some of the topics we have covered in class: Diseases spread by animals such as...Rabies (pretty much a whole episode was ridiculously devoted to this!), sexual harassment, healthy relationships, communication and anger management (Andy had a slight problem with this in season 2), concussions, and so on. If you're an Office fan, some of those should ring a bell.

I think the pinnacle of his Office obsession was on the morning of the season premiere. The eve of the premiere I caught some of the boys playing with the staplers on my desk and asking funny questions about how much they cost. It was a little suspicious, but I had no idea what they could be up to. I found out the next morning. A procession of about 8 kids walked into my room, all following the obsessed one. He carried a mold of lemon jell-o with ...a stapler inside! Jim would have been proud. Apparently they found out the hard way just how difficult it is to put something into jell-o. However, for amateurs, it looked really good! I had to send pictures to Keegan immediately and tell him that this was much better than the archaic 'giving your teacher an apple' tradition :-) I left it on my desk all day. A lot of my students thought it was another one of my object lessons -haha. By 5th hour it had melted a lot so you could actually tell what was inside.