For the most part I really like my group of kids. They are a wonderful bunch and I mean it. I find that a lot of the students are very funny. One of the projects that was assigned to the students was to make an acrostic poem out of their name. What they essentially had to was right their name vertically, and then write a positive descriptive word for each letter. For instance:
Z any
A rtistic
C lassy
K een
Well as I was making my way around to help the kids with words one of the girl told me that one of her letters was an "A", but she was not athletic. She asked if anti-athletic was okay and I replied no. Then her face lit up. My Jimmy radar went off.
"I got it! How about A (makes hand sign for "hole" (asshole). She laughs hysterically at this, but because of the nature of what she is saying and the hand sign she was making I had to explain to her about appropriate language and all that. It took a while but after some deliberation the student settled with awesome. Now, the next letter she wanted to do was the letter "N". No problem I thought, there's lots of good positive words beginning with "n" such as nifty, neat, noble, and nimble. Sure enough before anything happens she nonchantly tells me "Oh I know! I'm naughty!"
Maybe I heard her wrong. "What?"
"Naughty! That's me and it begins with N". She's laughing kindheartedly.
Bless her soul. She's only 10 I remind myself. She does not know what she is saying I tell myself over and over. I had to act quick cause the last thing I need is for someone to walk by and see me standing there next to her with a large piece of paper with her name on it and the words "naughty" written on it. I just told her without emotion "No naughty. Erase it and choose another word."
"But I love it! It describes me..."
"No" I repeated.
"It's not negative..."
"No. Listen to me and look at my lips: No."
"Okay I'll change it, but I still think it's a good word."
.
.
.
WTF.
Z any
A rtistic
C lassy
K een
Well as I was making my way around to help the kids with words one of the girl told me that one of her letters was an "A", but she was not athletic. She asked if anti-athletic was okay and I replied no. Then her face lit up. My Jimmy radar went off.
"I got it! How about A (makes hand sign for "hole" (asshole). She laughs hysterically at this, but because of the nature of what she is saying and the hand sign she was making I had to explain to her about appropriate language and all that. It took a while but after some deliberation the student settled with awesome. Now, the next letter she wanted to do was the letter "N". No problem I thought, there's lots of good positive words beginning with "n" such as nifty, neat, noble, and nimble. Sure enough before anything happens she nonchantly tells me "Oh I know! I'm naughty!"
Maybe I heard her wrong. "What?"
"Naughty! That's me and it begins with N". She's laughing kindheartedly.
Bless her soul. She's only 10 I remind myself. She does not know what she is saying I tell myself over and over. I had to act quick cause the last thing I need is for someone to walk by and see me standing there next to her with a large piece of paper with her name on it and the words "naughty" written on it. I just told her without emotion "No naughty. Erase it and choose another word."
"But I love it! It describes me..."
"No" I repeated.
"It's not negative..."
"No. Listen to me and look at my lips: No."
"Okay I'll change it, but I still think it's a good word."
.
.
.
WTF.
But it describes her...
ReplyDeleteman you're a square, if i had wanted to use the word naughty and the teacher said just with no reason, i wouldn't had liked him for it.
What you should had done is when she said it wasn't negative, you should had explained that not being negative doesn't make it automatically positive. Thus teaching her that there's gray areas in life and things like racism and preconceptions are all silly meaningless things.
but actually, being naughty IS kinda negative isn't it?
Oh the project was clearly stated and written from the very beginning: none of the words can be a negative word.
ReplyDeleteI also gave her the other reason as well: everyone's parents are going to visit the classroom and that the parents will question the word and why the teacher let it slip by.
She knew what the word meant and she was fully aware of what she was attempting to do. I am not dumb, she will say "oh my teacher said it was okay" and then my ass in on the line. I will have none of that. Children test their teachers all the time, because they want to know how far they can go.