9/26: a fresh perspective on mary poppins

I teach in a room that uses a white-board instead of a chalk-board, and all my markers are black. By the time I am done with my second class, there are black smudges all over my hands. If I happen to touch my face...well, I get marker smudges there, too. At the end of Latin today, some of my students wanted me to know that I did indeed have some smudges on my face, and I remarked that it was a little like Cinderella's cinders perhaps? One of the students suggested that it was more like Mary Poppins' soot. I said that I probably preferred the Cinderella route to the Mary Poppins route--and the students vehemently disagreed. They talked about Mary Poppins' abilities and the wonderfulness of Julie Andrews. And they reminded me to throw my stereotypical preconceptions of Mary Poppins out the window: embrace that inner (or outer) Poppins!