Shafty

One of my students has given me the nickname "Shafty" because he claims I "shafted" him a point on a vocabulary quiz back in September. (Apparently I should have known that he "meant" to mark answer C instead of answer A.) He reminds me of this every week. He won't let it go. (For the most part, he's joking, but I think a small part of him is really miffed over the one point.)

Anyway, the other day, I had my students respond to a choice of prompts, and one of them was a prompt that called for them to recall a time they had suffered and had become a better person through their suffering. (We were studying John Donne, who is all about the suffering.) Of course, this student wrote about the time I "shafted" him on his vocabulary grade. :)

The piece de resistance (forgive my lack of accent marks--I can't figure out how to do them) occurred yesterday when this student and his sidekick performed a song for me, sung to the tune of Isaac Hayes's "Shaft":

Who is the teacher who will take your point away?
She's Shafty, Shafty [my last name].
Who is the teacher who will rain on your parade?
She's Shafty--yeah, that's right.

I think I like being Shafty. Especially if I get my own theme song.