That's how we roll in Harlem.

First, let me fill you in on the latest slang.

"Miss, you be blowin' minds!" Means that whatever I just did or said is completely unbelievable.

"What's poppin' Miss Johnson?" The typical greeting for several of my students.

"Miss Johnson, what's good?" This is also a greeting. I wish I could say it for you because it's all about emphasizing correctly.

"Miss, I been done that." I been can be used proceeding almost any action. Grammatically it makes no sense, but it creeped into the spoken language somehow.

My all time favorite is still their protests about me "using their government." I have to admit that sometimes I do it just to bug them. The 15-year-old mentality is definitely getting to me.

I just took my last certification test, so barring disaster, I'll be a certified New York State school teacher this fall. I'll graduate with my masters degree in August! Woo hoo. I'm pretty excited about it. My last class is Linear Algebra and that's all I have to do all summer. Well that and play really hard. :) (Don't let anyone tell you that having summers off isn't worth it.)

In other news, my students take their state math on Thursday. That means that I'm all but done on Wednesday. I'm a little worried about how my students will do. My attendance has been below 50% for a month or so (and by "my attendance" I mean their attendance). It's really frustrating. I have a handful of students who will do really well, I'm just hoping that the rest of them guess well.