This blog was originally posted earlier in the week, but upon reading it, I decided that the contents are fine, but definitely not one cohesive thought. I want to keep the blog in tact, but clearly divide the entry into the two distinct parts they should be. I'm not sure I'd add any more to either 'half', so the content remains the same. However, as I mentioned in the first paragraph, my thoughts sometimes wander, and what comes out often ends up more interesting to me than the original train of thought. Sooo, I have split it into separate chapters. At the end, I have also added a post-script, because you know this whole project wasn't pretentious enough.
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When I set out to write a blog entry, I typically have an
end goal. I know where I want the
writing to take me, and I usually begin with a rambling preamble before I
settle into a rhythm. I try to stay cohesive,
but as in real life, on paper I tend to wander a bit here and there. Sometimes, I find myself introducing a
related but different thread to weave into the piece, and the challenge
suddenly becomes finding out how I can tie the damned thing together. It’s almost like the show ‘Lost’ in a sense,
in that the more I write, the deeper I wade into the topic, and the more
difficult it becomes to haul my feet out of the suctioning muck. There, what you’ve just read is an
aforementioned preamble. It's at about this point I have the end-goal mapped out, somewhat.
I
I wanted to take you inside the not very secret world of
my alter-ego, Mr. LeBlanc. I have been
teaching for three years, which is not a very long time in the grand scheme of
things, but it seems like I have seen so much in my brief career—itself a
preamble to what I hope will be a long one.
I’ve taught virtually every subject, either as a supply teacher or in a
contract job of my own. I had a child
poop his pants. One girl cut her own
hair. That same one glued her own
backside to the chair for fun. I had a
young man with Downs Syndrome climb a second-story balcony and almost
fall. I saw a girl lose a tooth in a collision on the
playground. I once had a student ask the DARE police officer if all police officers
like donuts. I’ve seen students throw
chairs. I had a student tell me one
morning he was super excited because his mom was coming home from jail. I once sat through a parent-teacher interview
with a mother whose daughter was terminally ill. She cried.
I almost did. I will never forget
it.
Where I’m going with this is that as a relatively young
teacher, although my years of service are few, my experiences have been nothing
short of remarkable. Even the rough days
leave me with memories for a lifetime, and stories to tell by the bucket load. Two things need to happen to the young
teacher crafting their trade. They need
to lose their fear. They need to toughen
up. And fast. If you are new to the profession, you need to
toughen up to the kids, because if you come across as too ‘nice’, they will
take advantage of you. They also won’t
take you seriously. Same thing goes with
the adults. Teachers are as different as
students, so it’s reasonable to assume that some people will like you, and
others will not. Whether we like to
admit it or not, it bothers us when people don’t like us. That’s where the toughness comes into
play. You don’t need to be abrasive or
confrontational, but you need to stand up for yourself without sounding
defensive. Somewhere along the way,
hopefully you learned how to socially interact.
There are no courses in university to teach you that.
How do you learn it ? You learn it the way you learn most
of the intangibles in life—by living.
Where do students ‘live’? They
spend roughly half their day at school, with teachers as their part-time
parents for the duration of their stay.
Their classmates are their roommates, and if you are thinking of that
annoying roommate you had that time, imagine having a few hundred. Expecting to get along with them all is
ludicrous; getting along with a small group is usually enough, and if you’re a
friendly person, you’ll be respected at very least. If you don’t learn social skills, or you grow
up in an environment where learning social skills is impossible, you are at a
severe disadvantage socially. Those
socially maladjusted students inevitably grow up to be socially maladjusted
adults. Some of them even become teachers. Most teachers have more good qualities than
not, but some, like the children they once were, are the reverse. I dare say you can make that claim in any
workplace, anywhere.
II
II
I once wrote a story about a guy I met while on a
hitch-hiking adventure back in my university days—when I was younger and less
afraid of the world around me, in my first degree. I’ve posted that story on Facebook, so if you
are interested, feel free to look it up.
The guy was kind of a jerk, and he swore like you wouldn’t (maybe)
believe. I’ve known some foul-tongued
people in my life, but two in particular stand out. One was a fellow who coached my volleyball
team in high school. He dropped the
f-bomb every second word, and was even reprimanded by the school administration
for his potty mouth during our practices.
The other was the driver that picked me up just outside Dieppe that
day. He was a little more versatile with
his vulgarity though; he was well versed in the George Carlin school of bad
language, and at least made things interesting when he swore. In both cases, I had to ask myself, how did
these two become chronic swearers? I started
to think about when I first began to use bad language. I remember my friends and I secretly giggling
about saying bad words out of earshot of teachers as early as Grade 2. It was an early form of rebellion, and one
that didn’t cost anything. You couldn’t
get out of cleaning your room or eating your vegetables, but damn sure you
could have your vengeance by (gasp) swearing about it.
Enter Mr. LeBlanc.
At school, we teachers are well-trained via our own self-discipline to
use only appropriate language. We do it
because it’s the right thing to do of course, but we also have that constant fear
that if we ‘eff’ up, we could jeopardize our careers. For some teachers, it’s as uncomfortable as
wearing dress shoes and ties (I wear neither unless it is absolutely necessary). But we hold it together because society
expects us to. As they should. We therefore place those expectations on the
students. We do not tolerate unacceptable
language at school, whether in class, in the hall, in the cafeteria, on the
playground, or on the bus. I say ‘unacceptable’
language rather than swearing, because I believe there are far worse words in
use that don’t necessarily count as swearing, yet in my opinion are more
damaging. ‘Stupid’ and ‘idiot’ are a few
examples. Racial slurs are obvious; the n-word
is probably the most vulgar word in the English language. Then there are some words that are in a gray
area, such as ‘native’ or ‘gay’.
Sometimes it depends how the word is used rather than the actual word
itself. Regardless, the rules of what
you can and can’t say are a lot like 4-square rules on the playground: you start with universal rules, but as you go
things change, people add rules, and some recuse themselves from them. Soon you don’t know what you can say
anymore. I once said the word ‘crap’ in
my class, and the students all held their breaths and admonished me. I told them to grow up.
Lately, students have been substituting ‘friggin’ or more
specifically ‘frickin’ for the usual, universally socially-maligned
f-bomb. I can appreciate their efforts,
but really, when they say it, it sounds hickish at best and derogatory at
worst, depending on the context. When a
student says it, and you prepare to admonish them for it, you need to take a
second to look at the big picture. The
student is clearly respecting the code we have set forth for them by making a
point not to say the f-word, which is commendable. As teachers, we often forget that they do
listen sometimes. They are also allowing
us to glimpse into the secret life of students, in which they all cuss like
sailors when we’re not watching. By
substituting a similar yet different word, they are betraying that little
tidbit. They are also mirroring what
others say, and students learn from each other, but someone in the adult world
taught some student somewhere the things we try so hard to stop them from
doing. Today it’s swearing. Tomorrow it could be speeding, stealing,
smoking, or watching porn. All of these
things are also ways to rebel against adults.
Maybe we see swearing as a gate-way habit, like marijuana is seen by some
as a gate-way to harder drugs. Except
the Liberal Party, of course. The fact
is, teachers need to teach the whole child, which is a concept bigger than
curriculum and assessment. The real
assessment comes when you open your mouth to interact with other adults. I gave the driver when I was hitch-hiking an
F, no pun intended. Still, you can’t help
but feel for the poor kid who accidentally slips and says a bad word. Immediately, we’re ready to hit the sirens
and shackle them to a wall for their insolent behavior and make a terrifying
example for their peers. Lately, I’ve
been politely reminding them that it isn’t appropriate to swear, or for that
matter to even use ‘frickin’. Not
because of any school rule or social code.
It just sounds bad. It’s beneath
us to use base language when we have at our fingertips far better words. We swear out of fear, and we swear out of
ignorance. As adults, it turns out, even
as teachers, the fear is still there.
Sometimes the ignorance is too.
So what advice do I give in regards to bad language? Well, adults swear, so children naturally
listen and also do it. I would suggest
we read more often, maybe work on those language skills so we don’t automatically
default to the f-bomb as much.
Conversely, I don’t think we need to censor with a hair-pin
trigger. As a society we have an
unnatural fear that if we let our kids hear a bad word in a movie or song, or
read it in a book that we are practically forcing a cigarette in their lips,
but that isn’t necessarily the case. We
worry so much about these little transgressions, and forget the big picture or
the whole child as it were. We’re all
human, and there is indeed a time and place for almost everything. Sometimes I wonder what makes any one word ‘bad’
in the first place. The young student I
mentioned earlier who thought all police officers eat donuts all day was
unknowingly being more offensive than if he’d said a bad word. Indeed, I know plenty of adults who never
curse, but are often offensive nonetheless.
Of one thing I’m pretty sure though is that a lower vocabulary indicates
ignorance. We aspire for our children
to succeed, both in school and in life after school, and we want people to think
highly of them, so we try our best to stop them from swearing, even though vulgarity
manifests itself in many ways all around us, in word and in deed. The gray area of what to say or do in any
given situation is a staggering task for children to learn, from teachers and
adults alike. The ramifications are
huge. It’s hard to land a job if you don’t
know what to say in an interview. Potty
mouths need not apply.
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Post-Script
I once had a teacher who, earlier in his career, was delivering an empassioned speech to the students in an assembly. This teacher was known for his eccentric behaviour, pungent cologne and slicked-back hair, and also for being somewhat clumsy. Okay, very clumsy. He once fell through a stage-lights hole on the same stage from which he was delivering this speech. His voice rose in crescendo as he paced the slightly warped, wooden slats, probably the boarded up light holes, and then issued the students the challenge "... to get up off your assss...perations!!" I didn't actually attend this of course; it happened years before my time at that school, but I never forgot the story. As a teacher, I find myself constantly afraid I'll slip in front of my students, and even most of the adults. Sliding the word 'aspirations' in there at the last second was brilliant, I think. Let's be honest, what was about to be said was the message he intended, and when you think about it, shouldn't kids get that message regardless? There's probably a more sophisticated way to say it, I suppose. I found that, after I read through this post, the title might not make the same connection to the piece that I was thinking when I decided on it, so hopefully this little epilogue enriches the experience a little. And if not, then, darn it all to heck.
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