NEWS BREAK (not breaking news): Teacher asks students to grade him. One wrote: ‘I give Mr. Ferlazzo an A at being annoying.’

California teacher Larry Ferlazzo. (Courtesy of Mariela Sanchez)

Here’s a brief break from the tragic, semi-tragic, infuriating and mind-numbing news that seems to rock us every day from, well, everywhere.

It comes to us from Larry Ferlazzo, an award-winning teacher of English and social studies at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento. He has written nine books on education and has a popular resource-sharing blog. Ferlazzo tweets frequently to his tens of thousands of followers @Larryferlazzo.

Ferlazzo routinely asks his students to write evaluations at the end of the semester and to grade him on his teaching, as he explains in this funny tweet.

I had all my classes do end-of-semester evaluations of our classes and my teaching. Most were very positive, though one student wrote “I give Mr. Ferlazzo an A at being annoying.”

— Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) January 15, 2019

In what way, I asked Ferlazzo, does he annoy students? So he asked them.

“Students had fun coming up with things I do that are annoying,” he said.

• “Asking them to read and watch history videos at home.”
• “Telling them that I’m not old.”
• "Asking them if they are doing okay.”
• “Asking them if they are sure that their work is their best before turning it in.”

But, he noted, "they were also clear they were joking."

Imagine that. Kids having fun in a classroom.