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Weird thing about teaching in an entirely black/Hispanic school: I subbed a class this week wherein three girls had my first name. I swear my students are going to bust me one of these days, because I look up every time I hear it – it’s not something I’ve had to get used to sharing.
You might think it is weird how fiercely I protect my first name (and age, and number of years teaching,) but know this: my long-term students go home after school every day and search for me on Myspace. I think this means I need to give more homework – not that they do what they’ve been assigned already. Regardless, if they figure out my first name, the jig is most definitely up.
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I don’t know if you have discovered Google Earth yet, but if you haven’t, do it – do it now. It allows you to zoom into any location from space via nifty satellite imagery, and it is the coolest Google Toy yet. It also provides the only activity more popular with my students than looking at rare and collectible sneaker auctions: pinpointing the locations of recent drive-bys and the exact 7-11s at which this or that fool got shot. Whenever I catch them doing this, I make them look at different college campuses.
It is getting harder and harder to avoid the “ghetto mentality” post.
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I subbed cosmetology for the first time the other day. I don't know which is creepier: the severed heads, or the worksheets about hair pigmentation headed with inspirational, life-affirming quotations.
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Spot the errors!
From yesterday’s Daily Staff Bulletin:
There was many staff that came out on Saturday, October 8, 2005 to give a helping hand to the many projects that were scheduled by the Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa’s Office, that took place around the school and the neighboring community.
2 comments:
what will happen if they learn your first name? will your authority be forever undermined?
The age thing is practical, as many of my students have siblings my age, and they seem to have a harder time respecting your authority once they've made that connection. They try to guess my age on a pretty regular basis, and they're almost always right. I reiterate that it's personal information that I do not intend to share. This usually makes them round up a few years, so that they go away thinking I'm about 28, which I neither confirm nor deny.
The name thing is a little less tangible, but yes, it does have to do with authority and the perception of power. Over the summer one of my co-teachers mistakenly referred to me by my first name rather than "Ms. L" to our students, and they all made that "oooooooh!" noise that means they are scandalized. Later on, during a test, one of our more challenging students waved me over, looked at me hard in the eye, and said, "I know your first name."
I told him, "And I know yours. Now do your test."
It was a weird experience - he clearly thought this gave him some power over me. While I'm not convinced other students would feel the same - as I say, he was a special one - I prefer not to find out.
There's also the issue of the internet. It is a strange time we live in, in which you can be Googled by anyone with access to your name and a modem. I already know, for a fact, that some of my students are looking for my profile on sites like myspace, sites that I use to connect with old friends, talk candidly about both my personal life and my job, and say things which I would never ever say in the classroom. I'm the same person in front of a class as I am at home, but it's very much a different dimension of the same person, and I want to keep them separate for myself as much as for my students.
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