See you on Monday, maybe?

I would add this to my "Kids Say the Darnest Things" list but I think this student but be onto something.

As I was leaving class, one of my 11th grade students said, "Bye miss Francesca, maybe I'll see you on Monday!"
And I of course asked "why maybe?"
The response- short, abrupt and passionate- "BECAUSE THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END! WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!".

My first thought was that this student is scared of earthquakes and other natural disasters. She's Chinese so she has far fewer reasons to be scared as do my Japanese students, several of whom have still not gotten in touch with their families.  I've been praying that they get in touch soon and I've been sincerely impressed by how much these students turn to schoolwork in a time of distress.

My second thought was did I miss the news?  Had the nuclear reactor in Japan actually have a meltdown? I considered the threat of nuclear radiation but I don't think my students are smart enough to register the danger.  They did inform me that I should consume massive amount of salt since iodine shield of SOME radiation. Thankfully, the prevailing winds will push the radiation over then ocean but still, it is 500 miles away.  Chernobyl caused birth defects in women as far off as 700 miles away.  The situation is not at the scale of Chernobyl and we can all pray that conditions stabilize soon.

Anyways, my students LOVE conspiracy theories so naturally their fear were removed from these recent real events.  My students fear that the moon  is too close to the earth.  A news article search told me that yesterday the moon was the closest its been to earth in the last 18 years (a relatively short period of time considering the moon's old age). NO notable news sources have related this event to the apocalypse.
I hope to fall asleep in the view of this giant moonlight sky then wake up and go to school tomorrow, just like any other Monday.

Regardless of what happens this is just fuel for all my students to make tangents about the movie 2012.  I say the movie since they probably can't relay the historical context of how the Mayans' calendar, the most accurate of all pre-modern calendars, ended in this year (I loathe misuse of the word ancient so despite my abundant use of hyperbole, I will not call any American colonies ancients).  It wasn't that they openly said the world would end then, they just stopped making a calendar. The entire school's obsession with this film (which was a terrible movie that I don't recommend anyone watch) explains why they don't open their textbooks, do homework or bring pens to class.