Here’s one interaction I heard when observing another teacher today:
Mr. [Teacher]: Jennifer has a good quote; let’s start with that.
Student: snap, I got you bro.
Mr. [Teacher]: You mean, I have your quotation, Mr. Teacher.
Here’s another one:
Student: He feels overpowered by his instinct.
Mr. [Teacher]: What you are getting at is a visceral feeling.
Student: A what?
Mr. [Teacher]: Visceral. (She writes it down).
She seems pleased to know the word.
These two interactions feel similar to Mr. [Teacher], presumably, and look similar to an observer. They are equivalent in the automaticity (and in the amicability) that characterizes them.
But they are entirely different interactions. The first is a condemnation. The second offers an alternative with little value judgment on [Student]’s language. The verb "give" (as in, the act of "giving" language) when applied to the second interaction, seems potentially self-serving but not entirely inaccurate. But the first gives me a little bit of moral trouble that can't be erased entirely by the exonerating notion of code switching.
The second interaction is an expansion, but the first is a substitution.
I love expanding student vocabularies. I was speechlessly thrilled when I asked [male student] to move away from [female student] because they were flirting with each other, and he exclaimed: hey, why don’t you ask her to move? That’s a double standard. I taught him what a double standard was; I gave him that language, that phrase. Having it thrown back in my face was the highlight of my week.
But I think I’ve also found myself, troublingly, in the business of censorship. What else is it when I demand that boys say “my friends” instead of “my niggas,” insisting that both words mean the same thing, but "friends" is a better way to say it? They two words of course do not mean the same thing [See Powerskill SL8, tested in my class last week: differentiate between synonyms based on connotative shades of meaning; ex. walk, trot, saunter, traipse]. All well and good, but “traipse” is only a better word than “saunter” if "traipse" is what you really mean. If you mean “saunter,” then “saunter” is better than “traipse.” Thing is, when they talk about their niggas, they mean their niggas.
Will my students fare better professionally if they stop using a word, at least around authority figures, that makes me uncomfortable just to type? Yes; I have of course considered and been relatively convinced by the cost-benefit analysis of code-switching. But I sought this job to encourage students to express themselves, and so to dabble in the business of restriction can't help but feel like a violation: not only of cultural relativism, but of the reasons I do this strange and wonderful work.
