What this blog needs...

IS A LITTLE FAUX COMPETETION!! As you may or may not now, loB and I have had the pleasure of teaching at the same school for the past 3 years. In that time we have competed over whose class could read more words (I won the first year...the second year doesn't count because I had 7th graders and apparently it is physically impossible to open a book at age 12), who gets the posters Mom sent for our classrooms, and whose classroom is neater. We have had competetions about who made the better mix of cover songs, mix of love songs, mix of political change songs, and mix of break-up songs. Luckily we have nice coworkers that humor us and act as judges in the battle of the music mixes. We have debated about which one of us the students like most and which one the students like least. It will come as no surprise to you that we want both titles and will spend hours presenting evidence in the effort to win. We have hosted two cupcake competitions and a competition to determine whether homemade whip cream or cool whip is better. We are constantly sending students to each others rooms to show off their work. I decided two weeks ago that I was going to make a notebook along with loB's english class. Prior to this decision loB had done no work in his notebook sample. This past week he has created a pop-up, double disc, book review, artistic masterpiece of a notebook and has sent it over 10 different times to show it off. Guess what I am working on this weekend... In case you haven't gotten the point of this dissertation I will offer one final piece of evidence. loB is "teaching" the yearbook class this year. In looking through their mock covers I discovered that they wanted to include a page titled "Top Ten Funniest Teachers." Upon reading this I told loB my goal was to make that list and hopefully be #1. I realize that my funny doesn't really translate to the blog, but in real life I am pretty much hilarious. My humor seems to play well with the middle schoolers. (Yes, I realize this is not necessarily a good thing.) loB just shook his head and seemed fairly supportive of my dream. The next day I was walking past his room when I heard a sound rarely heard coming from A-206...LAUGHTER!! Intrigued I moved closer only to discover my brother, the traitor, in the middle of a 20 minute stand-up comedy routine. Now, I have no idea who his writers were (Timber, Lisa, did uncle loren call you to get some jokes?) but he had the students rolling. It dawned on me...he is trying to still my funny glory! Game on!!! Clearly we thrive on competition. The students often seem confused by this...the can see that loB and I are friends and we enjoy time together but they also see that most of that time is spent in debate or competition. they don't understand the subtlety of the davis/briggs family PSEUDO COMPETITION. I can't just walk up to loB and say, "you are a funny guy and I am glad you are my brother." instead I must provoke him and lure him into debate. In doing this I set him up and give him the opportunity to come up with funny comebacks. Once he zings me I must get him back and so on and so on. All the while we are both laughing on the inside and appreciating the other persons humor. Essentially, we spend all day long setting each other up for success. Now I know I don't really need to explain this to you family members because clearly we learned it from someone. I have attended family dinners with you people. And last week out of the blue I recieved a text from uncle doug that said, "you are such a california girl." we debated this back and forth via text for a good hour. the message that I was supposed to get from this coded text..."we can't wait for you to get home to montana." (if this isn't the message don't tell me, doug)
now to my point...the past few weeks on the blog have been a bit disappointing...I can tell from the polls that we have readers. you clearly are interested in voting (putting you two cents in when it has to do with competition). We need you to become interested in POSTING and COMMENTING!!! We want to hear from all of you...and it doesn't just need to be about what you have been doing. Feel free to post about your favorite movie, a book you like, how I am the coolest person you know, etc. Let's get some discussion going people. Because we understand you are a competitive people loB has come up with a plan. we will be rolling it out within the next few days...check back often so you can get in on the game early and in the meantime POST, POST, POST!!