No, Sweetie, the World is NOT Flat...

Yes, more student teaching stories.  What can I say?  Not only do I spend the majority of my days with these little boogers, but they provide so much blog-worthy material--I just can't help myself.

During a discussion about the horizon, one of my favorite girls from my 4th grade class asked "If you keep walking and walking, eventually, will you walk off the earth?" At first, I laughed  because I thought she was joking.  I mean, really?  Fall off?  "No, sweetie, you won't fall off."  Haven't 10-year olds learned this by now?

She continued to explain herself, saying that if you look at the horizon line where the sky meets the earth, then that must be the place where you fall.  As I tried to explain to her that the earth is a sphere, and that if she did try to keep walking, she would fall into an ocean before she ever fell off, she continued to look at me in complete disbelief.

A few days later, she came to me again, pen in hand and drew a circle on the palm of her hand.  "Okay! So say this is the earth, and this is the equator (as she draws a line through the center).  If this were a road..."


Here we go again!

"Sweetie, the equator is not a real line.  It's invisible."

"Well, in my head I think it's real, like a road.  So, say I'm going along this road.  Won't I just fly off when I get to the end?" She then proceeds to draw two lines off the end of each side of the earth to which she says, "Ooooh! A Ninja!"

By this time I'm laughing so hard, because, it really does look like a ninja! That, and, I can't comprehend how she doesn't understand that, a) the earth is round, b) the equator is not a real line down the middle of the earth that she can just drive along at her leisure, and c) if ever the case that we could actually walk right off the earth, we have this thing called gravity that holds us down.

At this point she is laughing with me, as well as the line of kids who have accumulated behind her.  Some of them are trying to help me out with the gravity theory, as they are also trying to understand how she doesn't get it!  Since she was laughing, too, I had to stop and ask, if this was all just a joke or if she really didn't understand.  She claimed that she really didn't get it, so I told her that I would bring a globe the next day to try to giver her a visual.

Well, because it's me, and I'm Forgetful Franny, I forgot the globe.  Luckily, among the messiness of the classroom, we found one, and I tried to give an astronomy lesson about the earth.  Not so lucky for me, she still didn't understand.  I refuse to believe that I'm a bad teacher, because I actually love astronomy and wanted to be an astronaut at one point in my life, so I know I explained it thoroughly.  I tried everything, the class tried everything, and after 20 minutes we had to let it go.

So, to my favorite 4th grader and anyone else who might have this question lingering in the back of their minds, unless this happens:  the world is not, nor will it ever be flat!