You Know You Teach in Utah When....

- One student gets annoyed at another and snaps, "You have to be reverent in the hallway!"

- During journal-sharing in the morning, one of your students mentions that she will be getting baptized in a few weeks.

- You ask for students to ask their family / friends to send in postcards from cool places around the world and half of the postcards you get are from missionaries.

- A third of your class doesn't turn in their spelling homework every Thursday because "I had to go to scouts last night, so I couldn't do it."

- The Pope is mentioned in the read-aloud book, so you ask if anyone knows who the pope is, just to make sure, and everyone in the class just stares blankly at you.

- Then when you try to explain who the Pope is, someone says, "Oh, like the bishop?"

- While practicing alliteration, one of your students offers "red roadkill" as an example. Wonderful. Thanks for that.

- You ask, "Who has a big family?" and everyone's hands shoot up.

- So you say, "Okay, who has more than 3 brothers or sisters?" and only three people put their hands down.


- When you ask if anyone knows who the president is, the student you call on proudly answers: "President Monson."

- Then when you say, "No....." the student you call on next says, "President Hinckley?"


- And when you finally tell them that, no, you're talking about the president of the United States, and someone knows that the correct answer is President Obama, a good 4/5 of the students look disgusted and make some comment about how "My dad says he's running our country into the ground."

- The demographics in the class are not too surprising.

- When you ask who a responsible member of the community is, one of your students replies: "Jesus."

Utah has its quirks, for sure. But the really important thing is the kids, and I love these kids to death :)