Second day of school
Asked "Are you a nerdfighter?"
DFTBA!
Note: I said I wasn't going to go back and catch the first three days of school since they are usually uneventful, but I did have something absolutely awesome happen on the second day of school. I was making the seating chart for my 8th graders when one girl saw a picture hanging on my board:
She got up the courage to ask me if I was a nerdfighter and I laughed and said, "Yes! How did you know?" and she pointed out the picture to me and said that she recognized John & Hank. Now, I have inspired a few students to become regular watchers of some of their various projects (vlogbrothers, SciShow, CrashCourse, & LizzieBennet Diaries), but I had never had a nerdfighter student approach me on their own. Honestly, it is one of the greatest moments of my teaching career because nerdfighteria is such a great community and there are so many great experiences we share because of it. I'm still the teacher, but we also share another connection where we are on an equal plane. So, needless to say, we talked a lot- about John's books (she read them all this summer, I read the first 3 this summer), about their other channels, about happy dances, and so many more nerdy things. In addition to that she is reading the Thrawn Trilogy, which was the second Star Wars series I read and I read it in 8th grade as well. I'm still geeking out about have a real-world meeting with a fellow nerdfighter and in sharing my excitement with other students many of them have joined our ranks [in name, they already belonged in heart].
Something that happened after this shared experience is that I learned a lot of other students, especially females, considered themselves Nerdfighters and hearty followers of the Vlogbrothers, but thought that they were an isolated group and didn't think they'd share the commonality with an adult. Together we've become a core group of nerds that hangout in my classroom at lunch and play chess and watch YouTube and have a great local community.
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