My coworker and future roommate, the social studies department chair for next year, and I have a friendly banter going on. She insults math and any sort of geometric shape and I respond by mocking the study of history. Generally we have our shared 9th grade class carry mock-insulting messages back and forth and 9B truly enjoys this.
Yesterday, the message from 9B was "Ms. H says Geometry sucks!" Them were fighting words! So I appropriately responded by saying "Well you can tell Ms. H that we're going to have a battle! Math versus history!" My 9th graders seemed to think that math and history can't have such a battle so I proceeded to make something up on the fly, just like any good teacher would do. I decided that the way Ms. H and I would pit our subjects against each other would be to shout random vocab words from our respective disciplines at each other in a battle. Kind of like the way Pokemon used to be played (or so I've heard); it's like you're using an equilateral triangle to do your bidding and you wait to see what the other person throws at you (Julius Ceasar!? Oh No!)
Of course I had to demonstrate to 9B just exactly what I was talking about, so I started shouting things out while flailing my arms and legs like horrible karate moves: "Rhombus! Trapezoid! Parallel! Isosceles! Dodecagon!" 9B was literally rolling on the floor laughing so hard and of course as soon as class ended they ran to Ms. H and told her it was on!
Now not only is it a battle between the history and math departments, but the rest of the staff has caught on too. At any given time, you can hear random vocabulary words from all different disciplines being shouted out by staff in our school and I take full credit for this. My headmaster is somewhat concerned about his staff, but I see it as a positive thing. If anything, it gets the students excited about vocabulary!
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