Teachers Shouldn't Assume

Last week when I collected diaries from my classes there was one diary that stood out--it was quite well done.  In fact, it had no grammatical errors.  Yet there was a problem.

The student--a boy who sometimes has an almost-attitude--wrote about his sister being sick.  He said she had stomach problems and had to go see a doctor and get some medicine.

Then he wrote the following line: "I wonder if it was because of all of the crap we ate yesterday."

Oh my gosh.

"Crap".

I hadn't run across that word before, but I do sometimes have to deal with middle fingers being raised and some rare curse words.  Sometimes my Korean students have to learn that things they hear or see in movies/video games have strong meanings in real life and aren't very funny when done in public.

So I wasn't completely shocked, but I was surprised.

"Crap".

Ok.  Time for a teacher-student chat.

Class time rolled around, and it turned out that this one student was the only one present for the class.

Perfect.

I started out with, "David, your diary this week was well-written.  I liked reading the details about your sister's sickness.  Is she ok now?"

Then I moved into telling him about how a word he had written was not nice to write for a school assignment.

He looked at me with a blank face.

Ok, ummm . . . "One thing you didn't mention in your diary writing is what food your sister ate that you think might have made her sick.  Perhaps instead of saying "crap" you could write about what kind of food she ate."

He replied, "We all ate crab."