We read Of Mice and Men in 7th grade. It's a tough and heavy book for the sevies, what with the murder, the racism, the sexism, and the intellectual disabilities.
I read the first chapter aloud yesterday, and they thought it was really funny to hear me utter the words, "goddamn," "hell," "bastard," "son-of-a-bitch," and "Jesus Christ" over and over again.
Today I had to prep them for the even more troubling language - the n-word - which first appears on page 16. So, what I did was I had us list the "bad" words from yesterday, and I wrote them on the board. Then, we were going to discuss what was different about the "r-word" and the "n-word" and the other swears.
When I was in the middle of this, my boss came in for a walk-through.
OMG.
What to do? I just kept teaching, obviously. He seemed really interested in our discussion of bastards. The kids looked at him nervously. He said don't worry, he was just writing the words down.
5 comments:
Being real and teaching real! I wish my boss would come in more often.
Hot diggity! I cannot imagine being in that situation - glad your cool new school went with it.
Were they super quiet and attentive as you talked about the words?
My boss comes in A LOT. I should count. Last year, I bet it was like 20 times. I think he thought the lesson was okay, but he didn't tell me anything about it yet. The kids were massively giggly while we were writing the first set of words on the board, but then they sobered up, so to speak.
Sounds like a great lesson to me.
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