"You're Not My [expletive deleted] Teacher"

I've gotten a lot of advice about a lot of different things. I appreciated most of it, took some of it under consideration and that last little bit I pretended I never heard.

One piece of advice I received about writing this blog has something similar to this sentence:

"Maybe you should avoid swearing so you can be taken a bit more professionally."

I considered that and decided that I need to use whatever language necessary to tell my story, these kids' stories and the big story. Sometimes that language is inappropriate for most people. Trust me I don't like reporting some things I overhear and I do my best to be as creative and inventive with my own language to avoid swearing.

However this is something I overheard one urban youth tell another urban youth today:

"Fuck bitch, I fuckin know you ain't fucking with my motherfucking pencil and shit. You fuckin break my fuckin pencil and I'll fuck your shit up. Shit bitch, what the fuck you think you fucking with me for?"

Ironically, I overheard this in my language arts class.

There's always an argument for kids being kids. I remember when I discovered the joys of swearing in sixth grade and me and my buddies would be playing basketball spouting F-bombs at each other in hopes of being taken seriously. If an adult overheard though, there would be hell to pay. We wouldn't consider uttering even the H-E-double-hockey-sticks in the presence of someone who we respected.

It's something else completely when you hear fourteen year old kids string together expletives like they're paid by the swear. They would make a damn good living doing that. Damn good.

These kids talk to each other this way. I'm not sure everyone will agree that the language in and of itself is a problem, but anyone who has a modicum of respect knows there's a time and a place. If I lose a game of darts to a friend of mine at a bar you best believe I'm telling him to go fuck himself, but if I lose out on a job, the same can't be said for the email I send the potential employer.

Maybe we can make the argument that this student didn't know that I could hear them. I'd consider this more of an excuse than an actual argument but my rebuttal is going to be another choice selection of my time with my class today.

While barring a student from leaving in the middle of class he told me:

"You better stop fucking touching me. I'll go back to my fucking seat when you get your fucking hands off of me. You're not my fucking teacher, you ain't gonna do shit about it."

So we come back to the question of respect. Clearly this student had no respect for me, and I can't exactly blame him. I'm wearing a button down shirt, dress pants and badge with my name and picture on it. Besides looking dead sexy, I haven't done anything to earn his respect.

Years ago, I had respects for subs the same way I had respect for McDonald's. I know that it's not a real meal but I know it still gets the job done.

How do we fix the problem? Is it a problem? Where has the respect gone?

We can take this small example and apply it to urban youth's attitude towards education as a whole. Just like me and this student today, what has education ever done for these students but get them in a room and spouted promises of accomplishing dreams? They're told they have to work, but not told why. Short sighted goals lead to short success and more often than not these goals lead to failure. How can we hold up mediocre successes as examples?

Lesson 14: What the fuck have we done to earn their fucking respect?