The Charlie Brown Sound

“Welcome to Science,” I say in a big, booming voice.

This is how I begin each class. It is my call for attention and most of the students respond by ending their conversations and turning towards me. 

Sometimes, I will need to personally welcome students to class; “Welcome to science, Jennifer. Welcome to science, Steven.” This is my polite way of directly asking for their attention. I think it’s a lot more pleasant than “Hey you knuckleheads, stop talking!”

“Our daily learning target is yada, yada, yada,” is my next sentence. At this point my expectation is everyone is listening, but sometimes I’m wrong and I still don’t have everyone’s full attention. 

“Today we will go over the do now, add five vocabulary words,” and this is where I’ve decided I really don’t have the classes attention, so I will add something odd to the agenda. “and then I will ride around the classroom on my pretty, pink, pony” and stop talking.

The students who were listening will smile - they know what I am doing - the ones who were not listening will sense that something is up. It’s not that they’ve actually heard and listened what I was saying, but they sense that something is off in my cadence, and I’ve stopped talking.

What they’ve been hearing is the Charlie Brown teacher sound. “Wah wahh wha wa-wa wahhh, wah waaahh wah.” 

And this explains about 23% of the questions I get on a daily basis. 

I will say something like, “The homework is due Tuesday, if we have school tomorrow,” And a student will ask “We’re having ramen, tomorrow?

All he heard was  “Wah wah wahh wha wa wha, waah ramen tomorrow.”

(Really, this happened a couple of weeks ago)

Or I’ll write down the agenda on the board, review it verbally at the start of class only to have someone ask “What are we doing today?” And sometimes I don’t even answer because all I’ve heard is “Wah wahh wha wa-wa wahhh, wah waaahh?"