KidWhoHatesWriting seems to be back to his old ways, and they are exhausting. Today he refused to do his math and vocabulary quizzes and then said, "Shut up you faggot!" to another student. Now before I go on, let me explain to you how much I HATE that word.
I have developed, what I like to call, "bombs"; my students know what they are and know not to use them around me. The two most common "bombs" are the R-Bomb and the G-Bomb: the R-Bomb being retard and the G-Bomb being gay. I hate having to hear students call each other "retarded" or "gay", so whenever I hear it I yell out, "WHOAAA!!! WATCH IT WITH THE [R or G] BOMB!!" I then explain to them how insensitive and disrespectful those terms are and, not to mention, how they really do not make any sense within the context that they are being used. All of my students, both last year and this year, have responded really well to it and I've even heard them saying to each other, "Dude, Miss Anonymous is in here, you can't say the G-Bomb around her!" So, since I hate the words "retard" and "gay", you can only imagine how much I hate the word "faggot".
So as soon as I heard KidWhoHatesWriting say it, I instantly sailed into him. (I threw that in for you, Dad!) I told him to never use that word in front of me, how it is extremely disrespectful and degrading, and that he needed to return to his seat and control himself. This made him angry, so he refused to do any of his classwork for the rest of the period. Once the bell rang, he got up, left all of his papers on his desk and started to head for the door. As he passed me I said, "KidWhoHatesWriting, make sure you take your classwork with you." He ignored me and continued past me. I then repeated myself, only a little louder, and then watched him ignore me even further and walk out of the classroom. Now what he probably forgot was the fact that I am in the next class with him, so as he walked out of the door thinking that by ignoring me and pretending not to have heard me, he was getting away with completely disrespecting me, I knew we were going to have to have a further conversation.
At this point, I was extremely frustrated, but I knew I had to take a few deep breaths to calm myself down before confronting him in our next class. I took my time walking to the next class to allow myself to gather my thoughts and clear my head. So after entering the classroom, I let KidWhoHatesWriting know that because of the offensive language he had used and because he had blatantly disrespected me by ignoring me while leaving the room, he was going to have to serve a detention with me this week. I told him that because I don't know what his schedule is like outside of school, I would give him the option to choose which day would work best for him. His response was, "I'm not choosing a day because I'm not staying for your detention." I then responded with, "Well, then I'll just go give your mother a call right now to discuss it with her." And that is exactly what I did. She informed me that she would talk to him as well as his father and to let him know that not serving a detention was not an option. His father then called me around 6:30 this evening to get the full story as well. So my hopes are that if KidWhoHatesWriting, hears our concerns both in and out of school, he will get his act together sooner rather than later.
Soooo this brings me to my New Teacher Tip of the Day: Buy a wig to disguise your bald head, because you are bound to pull out every last strand of your hair.
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