Bad Words

There is inevitably a time in every educator's life when they will have to address a child using bad language. I have had two such occasions already in my first year…

Before Christmas break, we were "enjoying" yet another indoor recess. My students had really taken off in their writing and were really excited about being able to write in their very own notebooks. I was working in my classroom and our aide brought two boys into my classroom. The first thing that I heard was, "you're not going to call our moms are you?" So I knew that they had done something bad… turns out the boys were writing bad words in their writing notebooks and showing them off to their classmates. The words that they had written were butt and sh-t. Both boys knew that they were in big trouble. We discussed the words and why they were not ok for school. When I emailed their parents, I told them, "the silver lining, if you choose to see it that way, is that the words were spelled correctly-so at least they are learning something!"

Now this week… we were having guided reading in our classroom. There was a group of students working with me and the other kids were working in groups on other tasks. All of the sudden I overheard the word sh-t. I stopped and looked at the group and asked them who did it. They gave her up right away. I sent the girl to the office and told her that I would come talk to her about it. When I got in to the office she insisted that it was not her and that other students had said the bad word. So I went to get the rest of her group to talk it over with them. When they all came into the room one of the girls looked at me and shrugged, "I am just really confused because I don't even know what sh-t means!"

After we had our serious talk about the bad language, I needed a minute before I went back. When I got to the door, one of the kids tattled right away, "(he) already said a bad word!" He came out of the room looking sheepish. I asked him what word he had said and he told me, "the c word." Oh boy. So many dread-filled thoughts filled my mind about kids asking me what that c-word meant or why it was so terrible. With fear I asked him what c-word he said. He looked down in shame and whispered to me, "crap…"
Whew.