What do you do when someone in your
class says, “What the f*&%?” in the middle of class and very loudly? There
are a couple of options. You could ignore it and hope
it doesn't happen again, make a giant deal about it and shame the
student into crying, or you can do what I did and look at my co-teacher with a
giant deer-in-headlights kind of look. When my co-teacher finally looked at me,
she asked, "Is it okay?”
What I was thinking: Are you crazy? No it’s not okay for a fourth grade girl to
use “What the f*&%?” in her classroom skit!
What I actually said: “No, that’s a pretty bad word in English.”
My co-teacher then proceeded to relay this information to the entire class in
Korean. I have no idea if that was the best way to go, but that’s how it went
down. Thankfully all I heard after that were some whispers and “ohhs" and
none of the boys decided to test out their own pronunciations of the phrase in
question.
Later, the girl motioned me to come over and she said, “Sorry teacher,
I didn't know.”
Good girl.
The funny part about this, is that if this girl had been an adult, and
not in this class, it would have been hilarious because they were listening to
a fairy tale-like story, similar to Cinderella where the poor female
character is forced to do all this manual labor and the fairy comes to save
her. So, the girl inserted her, “What the f*%?” at a perfectly logical place in
the skit. It was right after her two stepsisters gave her a giant list of work
to do. I was so shocked that this sentence popped of her mouth that I was
stunned into silence, hence the crazy look I gave my co-teacher, but if I had
been watching it on TV, I probably would have laughed hysterically. It's
probably wishful thinking, hoping that this incident stays isolated, but
these kids are such gossips that it might have already made it to all the
fourth grade classes by now kind of like when I brought in some really
delicious organic lollipop candies from the US. I don’t even
think it took two days before all the sixth graders were asking me about my
“secret candy". I’m still not sure why they refer to it as “secret candy.”
Oh, the things these Korean kids say.
Oh my goodness! That's hilarious. It reminds me of when my son was very young, around 4 years old. He was playing a video game and all of a sudden I heard him say, "You huckers!" He couldn't pronounce the "f" yet, It became clear that I needed to clean up my own potty mouth!
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