Word choices and a jar of pickles

     OK, so that was an intense class.  I think in general the panel we had this week was good, in as far as how to deal with classroom management issues.  Things got interesting when the language used was examined.  I want to say first that I do not believe that any of the teachers at the panel meant for their comments to be taken in the way that they were.  I think that they used poor word choices to express themselves and I don’t think they meant to come off the way they did.  I think that they might have been very surprised to have their words taken in that manner.  I think that they were sincere in their desire to teach and that maybe they feel under appreciated and put upon because of the bad feelings between the teachers and the administration in the city.  I think that the strife between the different factions in the city has been building since 2010 and that it is hard for people to let go of that bad blood it colors everything they do and it influences the incoming teachers who were hired post 2010.  That is why I think that the teachers see themselves as victim or under a lot of pressure.  However, that doesn’t make it OK to categorize the student body as “these students.”  As teachers one should be very conscious of their word choice because for good or ill everything a teacher says will effect a student.   

     What people say and what people hear are two different things.  An example of what I mean is an argument I had recently with my husband.  Stay with me it does reconnect to what I’m saying.  OK so I bought a jar of pickles, a big jar, and I couldn’t open it.  So I asked my husband to do it, since that’s his job as a husband to open jars, kill bugs, and cook with fire and so on.  Well he was all like, “Let me show you my trick to opening a jar.”  We have been together over 15 years I know his trick, he uses a knife and hits the lid with the blunt end till the lid turns, I tried it earlier and it didn’t work, that’s why I wanted him to open it.  Well I told him “I don’t need a lesson I just want you to open it.”  This became a 20 minute fight.  Were he got upset because I didn’t want to be ‘taught to open a jar’ and I was telling him I knew how but I physically could not.  OK, how does this connect?  What one person says can be heard differently by someone else.  He was trying to be helpful, in his mind, in my mind I felt that he was saying I was incompetent and he was going to show me how to do it.  We need to be aware of what we say and the audience we say things to, we are never going to please everyone all the time but if we chose our words carefully we can avoid offending too many people.