I've started to develop twitches. They remind me of the eye twitch that appeared during finals time every semester at W&M. Instead of being physical, they are verbal.
There are certain triggers. I spent one entire school day (9 hours!) trying to excise "Pants on the Ground" from my earshot. It worked -- I have not heard it since. The penalty, however, became obvious when one of my housemates started singing it and I almost said, "I don't want to hear it!"
A friend, making a pun about some controversy involving the Special Olympics, called the dispute "retarded" in his G-chat status. Despite the fact that I was sitting in an empty room as I read it, I almost answered out loud, "Pick a new word." Ana and I are a two-woman campaign to remove "retarded" and "gay" from the insult repertoire of the middle school students.
While my "Pants on the Ground" spree met with relative success, "retarded" and "gay" are uphill battles. Ana and I each have had serious, "Come to Jesus" (thanks to my roommate for this teaching term!) talks with various groups of students, and the word usage has gone down, but it's hard to break a verbal habit, especially when you only have two teaching assistants who enforce it.
i think i'm just going to start leaving you long comments on your updates since i clearly fail at writing emails or sending letters... but i like this in some ways more because it can feel more like a conversation with you. does that make sense? the recent discussion on angela's status made me happy.
ReplyDelete1. this update is hilarious.
2. emphatic "yes" to your campaign concerning retarded and gay. because of my sister, my views towards retarded have continued to grow more adamant these past few years, and funny story.
one day in my high school logic class, well, first of all, i was having a really bad day for some reason i don't remember. and then one of my fellow students used the word retarded to describe something. i Flipped Out. i went on an entire diatribe about "how dare he" and then got out of my chair and went to the bathroom and cried. now it makes me laugh, but i also know from other conversations with said fellow student, he thinks more carefully about the words he chooses now. so i guess it was a win.
also, this was in the post today:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020402602.html?wpisrc=nl_headline
I am starting to think about all this stuff and wonder how on earth I'm going to enforce classroom discipline. That is, if I get a teaching job.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you a funny story about a teenage boy's use of the adjective "gay" in a romantic context. I think they just use it when they're uncomfortable. Oh dear.
Thanks for the read! I think a lot of what causes problems at the school is that nothing is real to the students outside of themselves. Which is hard for the best of us, but is even worse for teenagers...
ReplyDeletenoble campaign.
ReplyDelete