by Jane Morris
YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR
Here is a list of quotes from t-shirts that students have worn to my class:
Ben Dover
Bust a Nut (that’s what she said)
Oh shit!
Boobs Vagina Tits Vagina
I direct midget porn
Fuck you you fucking fuck
My other ride is your mom
Fart loading… please wait
I am sofa king wee todd did
To do list: You, your friend, your sister, your mom
I like big boobs and I cannot lie
Five dollar foot long (with a big arrow pointing downwards)
Don’t be sexist, bitches hate that
Got boobs?
(If you don’t recognize this one, I suggest you Google “the shocker”)
LET’S SMOKE SOME METH
In my school, teachers have to watch every single thing that comes out of their mouths because the students created a website dedicated solely to quoting teachers who say inappropriate things. While a teacher is supposed to know what should and should not be said in front of a class of teenagers, many quotes are much worse when taken out of context.
For example, the quote, “Let’s talk about breasts,” might sound pretty inappropriate if the fact that it was Breast Cancer Awareness Day was not included. Also, hearing that a teacher said, “Let’s smoke some meth” might strike someone as extremely inappropriate. But the context of the quote is vital. He or she merely asked the class what rhymes with Macbeth, and when a student answered “meth” he placed the word into the play to show how silly it was. “Let’s go smoke some meth, and with his former title greet Macbeth?” Everyone laughed and the class moved on with the lesson.
Another example is when I told a student that she is a ho. Out of context, this would sound pretty terrible; therefore it is imperative that you know the situation in which it occurred. The class was reading The Crucible, and a student got confused about the part she was playing. While she was in the middle of playing Abigail, John Proctor’s mistress, she stopped to ask why she would act a certain way if she was his wife. To clarify, I reminded her that Abigail is his mistress. She said, “So I’m a ho?” To which I replied, “Yes, you are a ho. If that is how you choose to word it.” See? Not so bad. But remove this fact from the circumstance and it looks pretty awful.
It probably looks rather horrible when you read that I told a student I was going to send him back to Africa. But the quote does not include the background information about the student telling me that if he ever got in trouble in school his parents told him they would send him back to Africa. Thus, we had an on-going joke when he misbehaved about my calling home and his resulting trip to Africa. It eventually broke down to my joking about where he would end up. But without the explanation, I’m sure I look pretty racist and terrible.
It’s all about context, and students love to remove it.
THE TIPPING POINT
After we finish reading a novel, I like to give a creative homework assignment that asks students to design a visual representation of their favorite scene. This is a very easy task. All they must do is choose an illustration (either one they make themselves or something taken from the internet), and write a synopsis of the scene, including a quote from the text. With minimal effort, the assignment might take five minutes.
Despite the simplicity of the assignment, there is always someone who forgets to do it and quickly scrawls a shitty stick figure onto a piece of paper. I am insulted when they try to hand it in, and I immediately reject it. On this particular day, that is what Dorothy did. I looked at her with contempt and said, “You must be out of your mind.” She took her paper back and it ended up on the floor underneath her desk.
During the next class, Igor had also forgotten his homework. He found Dorothy’s stick figure under his desk, which now had a huge, dirty footprint on it and quickly scribbled the title of the book across the top. When he put the paper out in front of me, I thought I was dreaming. “You must be joking,” I said. He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re actually trying to hand this in?”
He shrugged his shoulders again. “You found this on the floor!” I yelled.
“Gimme a break!” With anger, Igor swiped his paper from my hand, crumpled it up and shoved it into his desk.
The next class came in and I saw that Herman, who generally hands his work in on time, was particularly upset because he had forgotten to do the assignment. A few minutes later I almost fell over when I saw the crumpled up piece of paper with the same stick figure and footprint in Herman’s hand. He had added his name to the back of the paper. I lost it.
“How stupid do you think I am?” I said. Herman completely froze.
“I mean, don’t you have any dignity?” I cried out. “Two other students just tried to hand in the same garbage you just found on the floor!” Herman was silent and so was the class. “What would you do if you were me?” I asked. “Huh? If you were me, and I tried to hand in the crumpled up stick figure with a dirty footprint on it, what would you do?” Herman said nothing. “Tell me Herman! Am I supposed to accept this work? Am I?” Again, nothing from Herman, who was slowly losing the color from his face. I admit, I was going way overboard with this, but he had become the tipping point.
“Okay,” I declared, “You be me and I’ll be you!” Herman looked like he was going to cry. “Hey teacher!” I said in a mocking tone. “Here’s this dirty piece of paper I just found on the floor. It’s my homework!” I held the paper out to Herman, who did not respond. “Now tell me what I’m supposed to do, teacher! Tell me! You be me! How are you going to respond?” Thankfully, Herman remained silent, and I spun around and quickly jumped into the day’s lesson. I completely overreacted, and with a more obnoxious student, that exchange could have ended very badly. But sometimes, there is only so much a teacher can take!
VALENTINE’S DAY SURPRISE
On Valentine’s Day, the following drawing was left in my mailbox:
It was drawn on the inside of a ripped up conversation hearts box.
A WILDLIFE HABITAT CALLED MIDDLE SCHOOL
Before I started teaching full time in high school, I had a brief leave replacement in a middle school. Human beings age 12 to 14 are like a separate species from the rest of the population. They act, think and even smell differently from the rest of us. Thankfully, most of them find some sense of civilization around the time they enter high school. But during those strange years when they are no longer children, but definitely not adults, they adopt very unusual behaviors and habits.
One of the major issues with middle schoolers these days is that they have the bodies of forty-year-olds with the minds of elementary school kids. Many sixth-grade males have full grown mustaches and deep manly voices. The females often develop more fully than their own mothers. This shit is highly confusing. They look like adults but act like cave dwellers. And for most of them, their biggest challenge is conquering personal hygiene.
Take Shirley for example. Although only a 7th grader, Shirley had humongous breasts the size of soccer balls. If she weren’t twelve, I would assume they were implants. She wore bras that were way too small and very low cut shirts and as another teacher put it, she would “squeeze her two Christmas hams” into a low-cut V-neck, most often times with words like SEXY or HOT printed on the front. She kept everything in between her breasts, which was awkwardly clever. If you caught her using a cell phone she would wedge it into her cleavage, just daring you to ask her to remove it. It was super festive when she would receive a call and her chest would light up and play music. She also kept several pens, pencils, erasers, tissues, lip glosses and her homework crammed in there. On my last day she pulled me into an awkwardly tight embrace and whispered into my ear, “They’re real.”
Fred was another remarkable junior high creature. Fred was extremely overweight, wore very tight t-shirts, and either he sweated specifically from his nipples or had the ability to lactate. He also ate erasers, penc
ils, paper, tape and pen caps. On one occasion, he ate most of a pen until it exploded in his mouth and was running down his chin and neck. He didn’t realize at first and continued chewing away gleefully, looking like a psychotic cartoon monster. Fred also had significant foot fungus issues. It was a constant fight to get him to keep his shoes on because he said his feet were “really friggin’ itchy” and he couldn’t really scratch them without completely exposing them. When he removed his shoes, it was like someone had introduced an airborne toxin into the classroom atmosphere, and everyone would protest. One day a student came up to me with tears in her eyes and said, “You have to move my seat. I have to be as far away from him as possible. It burns my eyes!” For this reason, I insisted that Fred sit by an open window at all times, regardless of the weather conditions.
Besides his foot odor and lactation, Fred sang old sea shanties during exams and had the fascinating/revolting habit of picking his nose and saving his findings in a Ziploc bag. He would often take out the bag and remove some of its contents to snack on. I’ll take a moment to let you wipe that image from your mind.
Clarence was rather small for his age, but his personality certainly packed a punch. He showed up twenty minutes late for our first class. When I asked where he had been, he replied, “None of yo’ b’niss beeotch!” I was awe-struck by his forthrightness. I asked him to sit in the empty desk at the back of the room and he replied, “You mean the one with the dick on it?” He was right; the desk did have an enormous penis drawn on it. “That’s right,” I replied.
For three classes, I was greeted with a “Sup Beeotch!” or a “Damn, you one ugly muthafucka!” I wrote him up for verbal abuse and inappropriate behavior, but to no avail. During our fourth class together we went to the computer lab. Clarence spent the entire class translating the word penis from English to various foreign languages such as Japanese, turning up the speakers on the computer, and repeatedly hitting the translate button. He was finally removed and placed into a class entitled, “Appropriateness in Social Situations,” or ASS Class for short. I hope he did well there.
My most challenging middle school specimen was Estelle. On my first day, she gave me a handwritten list of her self-diagnosed mental illnesses. The list included the following:
1) Sometimes I get bi-polar and shit.
2) I get real mad.
3) Don't talk to me if I wear red. Red is my angry color and it means I'm going threw something.
4) I haven't choked nobody since 2nd grade.
5) I pick the color blue for you but don’t ever wear red cuz it’s mine.
At first I was constantly writing referrals for Estelle refusing to sit anywhere but behind my desk, hitting students in the back of the neck with various classroom objects, and threatening to “bust” on anyone who spoke to her. At least once a week, I would catch her writing ransom notes to her history teacher. She told me she stole at least one thing from his room each week and then gave him five chances to get it back. She said that five chances are better than three because, “Three is just racist.”
When I asked the class to list their strengths as writers, she wrote, “Cash, money, hoes.”
After many months of pleading with Estelle to find a seat of her own, she finally agreed. But then a special education teacher started attending class to work with certain students. Estelle sat behind my desk again that day, and would not return to her seat. Because she was wearing red at the time, I approached carefully and sat down next to her.
“What’s up?” I asked. “That bitch is weird,” she said. “Which one?” I asked. “The lady who's all up in here all the time. What she got to be in here for? Did you tell her about my bi-polars?” she asked.
“No. Your bi-polars are private business. And by the way, I meant to thank you for that list. I found it very informative. I admire your candor. You're a courageous young woman,” I said.
“I don't know what the fuck you’re talking about but thanks,” she responded.
After that, I became Estelle’s personal therapist. She visited me daily, after school, to tell me about what had stressed her out that day. I decided to give her a “Daily Stress Journal” which consisted of a chart that asks the student to list the details of what causes them tension. Her chart described the following situations:
1. Drama
2. You think your better then me?
3. Teachers
4. Told the bus driver to shut up
I asked Estelle to explain why she told the bus driver to shut up. She said, “I was late for the bus and I had to run to catch it cuz the bitch wouldn’t stop. When she stopped I got in and had to sit next to this retard cuz there weren’t any seats. I threw my bagel at the back window and it stuck there. Everyone was laughing, but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t think it would stick. Then the driver told me to clean up my mess and that's when I told her to shut the fuck up. But I said please.”
Estelle was given a lunch detention for her episode with the bus driver. However, she felt her lunch detention should be excused because it was Black History Month and she should get a free pass, at least until March. She wrote a letter to the principal and asked me to pass it along just in case he didn’t take her argument seriously. The letter read,
“It is against my rights to serve detention because I didt do anything wrong and you are all retards and the 14 amenmet clearly states that slavery is over so I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to and cuz you aint my daddy nor are you my mom and I aint a slave. So you can’t tell me what to do cuz its civil rights!”
You have to admire Estelle for her strength of character and resolve.
Of all the middle school creatures I encountered, Lance was the most fascinating. On my first day, he ran around the room in circles refusing to sit down. Then he hit another kid straight in the center of his back with a giant yardstick. Next, he took off his shirt and pressed his bare breast against a female student’s face. He joyfully asked her if she liked the way his nipples smelled. This was quite fun to type into the school’s referral system. Lance also wrote love poems for me on a weekly basis. The best one said, “You are like a rose growing in sand, Can’t you tell me why I can’t be your man?” Each week I would find a new poem in my school mailbox along with a half-eaten snack. I asked the secretary if she had seen him drop them off. She said she didn’t even think he actually went to our school. That was comforting.
Lance was creepy. I was genuinely afraid of him. He once offered to bring in chloroform for a class party. While the other kids wrote things like, “Cheetos” and “soda” on the sign-up sheet, Lance wrote, “Chips, Chlorophorm.” I didn’t question him, ever.
There is something about study hall that really brought out the worst in my middle school students. Maybe it was because there was no lesson plan or set activity. It was a time set aside for homework and studying and it was completely self-motivated. I was essentially a babysitter for that block of time. When you ask a twelve-year-old boy to entertain himself for an hour, you are asking for trouble. One student actually stapled a piece of paper to his forehead. It was the most horrific thing I have ever seen. Another student flung open a window and started throwing kids’ backpacks and books out into the street. I was careful not to provoke him when I threw him out because he had just been removed from a different study hall for punching his pregnant teacher in the stomach. His only punishment for that was just being removed from that study hall and placed into mine.
Amongst the chaos of study hall I couldn’t help but notice a group of girls working feverishly on a chart. This chart turned out to be the most disturbing thing I learned about middle school life: they charted their sexual experiences and determined each other’s level of coolness and acceptance based upon these ratings. Each sexual act got a point value; the more scandalous the act, the higher the point value. Points were also added for location and number of partners. For example, a girl had sex with two boys in the boys’ bathroom. This earned her ten points for the sex,
an extra two points for the additional partner and an added five points for the dangerous location. She also received another five points because one of those boys was considered the most popular boy in the school. For the total amount of points, she received the honor of wearing a hot pink wristband, which served as a symbol to the other students of her sexual status and popularity. The school eventually found out about the chart and prohibited the wristbands. They also suspended the girl who had sex in the bathroom, though her parents could not understand why. They felt that the punishment was way too harsh for their daughter and fought it pretty hard. Perhaps they should have cared more about the fact that their 13-year-old daughter was having a threesome at school? (Just saying…)
BRAIN DAMAGE
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, being a teenager is extremely hazardous to one’s health. “Mortality rates jump between early and late adolescence. Rates of death by injury between ages 15 to 19 are about six times that of the rate between ages 10 and 14. Crime rates are highest among young males.”[15] MRI comparisons between teenage brains and the brains of adults have shown that most of the areas are the same except for the immaturity of the adolescent brain in the frontal lobe, the area that controls impulses and decision-making. Apparently teenagers rely on their “more primitive limbic system” in interpreting and reacting to emotion since they lack the more “mature cortex that can override the limbic response.”[16]
I once saw an exhibit about brains at a science museum. It claimed that when scientists studied the brains of teenagers, the decision-making areas of their brains closely resembled that of an adult with brain damage. The following incidents will prove this finding to be decidedly true:
• A student decided it would be “fun” to throw a five-pound textbook from the third-floor railing at school. It hit a girl on the head resulting in a brief coma and ironically, permanent brain damage.
