Funny things said around the classroom

Learning, here, is always interesting. It seems like I am constantly challenged to find new ways of explaining things, this week was no different.

Jesse has recently started learning about negative numbers. She was totally confused why the negative number would go up when it was subtracted. Here was my explanation:

Lets say you were feeling very generous and you gave away all of your money to charity. You have no money left; however, you owe Chloe $5. But you also owe Susie $10. Does that mean you only owe $5? No. You still owe Chloe $5 and Susie $10, therefore your total debt is $15.

I asked if that helped, and she said it did.

Chloe, however, raised her hand (after listening intently to my explanation-no they do not do the same math) then asked, "Who is Susie?"

I 'bout fell out! I suppose next time I should not use whatever name pops into my head, but instead name a friend of theirs.