Crossroads School: Fragments
Apr. 17th, 2007 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkstowolvesIn my Film Studies class, about Citizen Kane (the first movie we watched in there):
"I don't get that movie at all... Something about a newspaper, Rosebud is a sled, I don't know...!" -K/D
Ah, if only you could hear the tone as well. It was absolutely hilarious, the desperate confusion and yet clarity with which he spoke.
* * *
One of my 11th-graders (Sweetpea), upon hearing about the Don Imus comments: "I didn't think what he said was that bad. I mean, I'm friends with white people and I know that you guys ain't racist. You just can't help bein' crazy."
* * *
An actual conversation that took place in class (as near to verbatim as I can remember it):
Me: "Do you know what the ones who skipped out on the draft and ran to Canada were called? ... ... Draft dodgers." (For some reason, after this explanation, I mentioned that Clinton was a draft dodger.)
LazyJ: "Ms. B, if Clinton ran for president again, would you vote for him? No, wait, are you going to vote for Hillary?"
Sweetpea: "Of course she is! Because she's a woman. Just like I'm voting for Obama because he's black."
I leapt in at this point to assure my students that I do not vote in accordance to skin color or physical sex and that they most certainly shouldn't either. We talked that out for a few moments, and then I posed the question of whether they thought a woman or a black man would be appointed to the office of president first.
All of my African American students immediately asserted that a woman would be voted in first. My other students didn't really respond. Then, LazyJ specified that he felt a black woman needs to be president before a black man ever is.
They're not voters yet, but they're going to be. Finding out their opinions was quite interesting.
* * *
We've lost another math teacher. I swear, the math position at my school is like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts: apparently dangerous and it never stays filled. It's a real shame too, because this latest teacher was really doing a lot of good.
"I don't get that movie at all... Something about a newspaper, Rosebud is a sled, I don't know...!" -K/D
Ah, if only you could hear the tone as well. It was absolutely hilarious, the desperate confusion and yet clarity with which he spoke.
One of my 11th-graders (Sweetpea), upon hearing about the Don Imus comments: "I didn't think what he said was that bad. I mean, I'm friends with white people and I know that you guys ain't racist. You just can't help bein' crazy."
An actual conversation that took place in class (as near to verbatim as I can remember it):
Me: "Do you know what the ones who skipped out on the draft and ran to Canada were called? ... ... Draft dodgers." (For some reason, after this explanation, I mentioned that Clinton was a draft dodger.)
LazyJ: "Ms. B, if Clinton ran for president again, would you vote for him? No, wait, are you going to vote for Hillary?"
Sweetpea: "Of course she is! Because she's a woman. Just like I'm voting for Obama because he's black."
I leapt in at this point to assure my students that I do not vote in accordance to skin color or physical sex and that they most certainly shouldn't either. We talked that out for a few moments, and then I posed the question of whether they thought a woman or a black man would be appointed to the office of president first.
All of my African American students immediately asserted that a woman would be voted in first. My other students didn't really respond. Then, LazyJ specified that he felt a black woman needs to be president before a black man ever is.
They're not voters yet, but they're going to be. Finding out their opinions was quite interesting.
We've lost another math teacher. I swear, the math position at my school is like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts: apparently dangerous and it never stays filled. It's a real shame too, because this latest teacher was really doing a lot of good.