I Guess I'll Have To Screen Every Single Video Every Single Year To Prevent New, Previously Unforeseen Faux Pas

Sweet Gummi Mary! How times have changed since I first started this little teaching interlude!

Why, I remember how, back in the day, if we wanted to show a film, we had to order it from somewhere like The American Red Cross, and drive an hour to pick up that big round flat metal canister, and then check out a reel-to-reel projector from the Audio-Visual Department, and thread that film in a figure eight kind of pattern, and hope the bulb didn't burn out, and, well, it was quite a production to find educational materials to enhance your students' book-learnin'.

Today all I have to do is log in to the video service the school subscribes to, type in a search, and VOILA! Twenty or thirty age-appropriate videos on a subject to choose from, of various lengths, all for the taking. The only thing I have to do is turn on my ceiling-mounted projector with the button on the remote, push on the button for my sound amplifier, and we're watching earthquake videos to go with yesterday's lesson. Sure, sometimes the videos are about 15 years old, but they provide the sciency information that I'm looking for.

Here's another example of how times have changed. Something that wouldn't have caused an eye to be batted 25 years ago makes people cringe nowadays. Like if a kid in a video has his shirt off, walking down the street in his shorts, showing no more than he would at the pool or beach, the students gasp. Like it's some kind of pr0n! You'd think we were back at Plymouth Colony, with somebody about to be thrown in the stocks! And thank goodness I don't show sports videos, because I can't imagine the smelling salts that would be needed if today's youth saw the basketball shorts those college and professional players wore in the 70s. Seriously. Today the shorts come down to their ankles, and they wear T-SHIRTS under their tank tops!

So...when I show my kids these sciency videos, I introduce them, point out topics that should be noted that go along with our lesson, and then listen with one ear while I catch up on work as the students watch the video. After all, I've seen the videos four times a year for three or four years. I can field any questions they might have.

Today I was jarred out of my busy-bee-ness when I heard a phrase from the narrator. A phrase that should never be uttered in a high school classroom. The subject was tall buildings, and how they react to earthquake waves. How the base moves back and forth, which can cause the building to collapse if it is not built up to earthquake code. When I heard the verboten phrase, I stopped working and looked at the screen, open-mouthed. The kids cut eyes at each other. Some of the more facially-expressive lifted an eyebrow or two.

"This seven-story building will sway like a hula dancer."

Yeah. Pretty sure parents don't want their kids coming home saying they learned about swaying hula dancers in science class.