I’m a mid-life career changer, in the middle of my student teaching experience on the way to becoming a full time high school math teacher. I’ve been reading the Dope for many years now and it has always been better than most other educational venues for the kind of random factoids and creative vernacular that I so enjoy.
But I’m finding it difficult to sublimate the linguistic cocktwaddle I learn here while presenting straight-faced lectures on factoring polynomials or calculating the equations of perpendicular bisectors to impressionable youth.
Does anyone else on this board suffer this inhibition? Can you comfort me during my gag-order? I think it’s temporary, once I have a classroom of my own and am no longer being scrutinized by a supervising teacher I anticipate a certain degree of freedom to establish my own boundaries. But until then, my vocabulary is becoming a bit constipated.
If you’re asking for a Bullshit-to-English translation guide (and if you’re not, color me dazed and confused), have you investigated Urban Dictionary as a starting point? I’m one of those people who reads the regular dictionary for entertainment, letting unknown word to unknown word searches liven up my vocabulary. The UD is a source of many laughs as well as for keeping a bit abreast of the latest slang and ghetto utterances.
I have never even tried to find out if there’s any real validity to the thing, since it appears to operate on the Wikipedia principle: if you have access to a keyboard, you’re an authority.
If this is off-topic, please clarify your actual needs.
[Moderator Note]sunacres, would you mind choosing a title that had something to do with the topic at hand? E-mail the IMHO mods with an alternative title as soon as possible. Thank you.[/Moderator Note]
Hey Czarcasm, can you cut the OP some slack on this one occasion, please? That is one of the best thread titles I’ve read in ages (and it’s not like this is GQ or anything).
I’m equally mystified, but I bet it’s something our pal Sampiro could write a good story about.
re. the OP, sunacres, as soon as you get a classroom to call your very own, I’m sure the pupils will LOVE your “random factoids and creative vernacular”. AND, if they start paying attention to you just to find out what weird stuff you will say next, they might even pay enough attention to learn stuff too. Everyone wins!
Sorry about the obfuscatory thread title. I’ve offered a suggested alternative to the mods as requested.
The problem is, I like to pepper the spoken word. And sometimes the Dope is like an habanero orchard. But my current circumstances, student teaching under the direction of a more sensitive, soft-spoken lady, are stifling my impulses.
Well, the first time I had a student shoot back at me “Correlation does not equal causation”, I about burst with pride, but I gotta say I used that line on like 500 kids before one internalized it enough to use it against me later.
I will say that, as a teacher, the linguistic boundaries in your classroom are yours to set. For the first few years, I was nervous and strict, but I cuss now–not a lot during school hours, and never, ever AT a kid, but if a perfectly placed “damn” will make my point, I use it, and if a student lets slip a damn or hell or even shit, I don’t sweat it. But they are never allowed to cuss at each other, or use slurs.
Of course, I also teach irony as “when you think you are eating chili, but it’s actually your parents.”
Thanks Manda JO, I think you’ve zeroed in on the source of my anxiety. I don’t think I’m sufficiently disciplined yet to suppress the reflexes I spent 50 years developing. My siblings and I, and my closest friends, express our affection for each other by taking the piss, with savagery varying directly with intimacy.
My students are street-tough but sweet and squishy soft underneath. Some are whip-smart with razor sharp tongues. My kinda kids. But they’re not my siblings or my closest friends and I have new boundaries to establish. I’ll be fine, but I know it’ll be hard work to be that self-aware.
In the meantime, I’m suffering from having to bottle it up entirely while student teaching. Maybe a Dope hiatus until June would help…
