Ok, here goes...
My first day assignment was to write a letter to me introducing themselves. I am looking to get to know them, see what their grammar and punctuation skills look like, and to see if they understood the parts of a letter.
**sidebar**Because I gave this assignment, I now have seventy letters to read over the weekend. You may now address me as "Fool". Miss Fool if you're nasty.
I handed the letters back yesterday so the kids could take them through a rubric. It was a final check for them. I handed them back to the kids individually (so as to reinforce all those names). I call a kid's name, "Potsie". I have three students named Potsie here, so the kids look at me expectantly to see which one.
Flashback to Thursday, first day of class.
After my procedure talk, I ask for questions. One child, blonde and saggy of shorts, raises his hand for a question.
"Yes, sir."
"Mmmmkay, it kinda be hot upinhur, knowwhudI'msayin? I don't like it all
hot, knowwhudI'msayin? So whadda you think you can maybe kick up the AC up in
hur, knowwhudI'msayin?"
"Let me see if I do, in fact, know what you are saying. You're
warm natured, and you are asking if there's a chance that I could turn on the
air?"
child sheeplishly nods the affirmative
"I can't promise anything, the thermostat up in here doesn't always
respond. I promise I will try though, I like it cooler myself."
So we're back to me handing back letters. I am frozen looking at Potsie's letter. See, I know it belongs to Thursday's warm natured sagger, I saw him turn it in and made a note of the street English on the paper. But there wasn't a last name. There was only...
I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to call the child this in class and validate his foolishness. Scan, scan, look for a real last name, where is the last name!?!?! Crap. I have to say it.
Which Potsie, Ms. Educat?
*sigh* Well...Pimpdaddy.
The class erupts in laughter. Pimpdaddy Potsie takes the long walk to
me, head down.
"It wasn't me."
"What?"
"I'm not
Pimpdaddy."
"What do you mean?"
"The paper is mine, but
I didn't write Pimpdaddy on it!"
Clearly, he wrote Pimpdaddy.
"It's ok, but let's just use standard English in the future,
ok?"
Let's just hope this took care of things.
6 comments:
I have a feeling it's going to be a long school year.
Just be glad you don't have me, Bitchcakes Jim, in your class.
I'll be praying...
Pimpdaddy is so... last year. One could only hope for some originality...
BW
Do you know about The Phantom Professor? She was an adjunct at SMU who wrote brilliantly and eloquently about her students. Her blog is remarkable--or, as your student would say, 'da bomb!'
(And parenthetically she was fired for the blog, which I hesitate to mention, although I am CERTAIN her firing had more to do with her status as an adjunct than it did with her writing and I don't want to scare you because I think you SHOULD write about your students but I felt the need to include that little fact. Whew.)
Susan--
Great tip! Phantom Professor is facinating!!
Don't you LOVE her? The real tragedy is that she seems, according to students who spoke out when she was fired, to have been a tremendously good teacher. And you know she scored a book deal off the whole firing.
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