Thank you sir, may I have another?!

It’s been a month since my last post, a depressing figure given my pledge to write more. It’s not for lack of time…I usually spend my weekends on a couch with school materials and my laptop, frequently pausing to marvel at the Travel Channel’s programming playing for hours on end in the background. As a result, I’ve fallen in love with Anthony Bourdain.

GOD

But this makes my experiences over the last month seem inconsequential when they were most certainly not. Just this past week, I realized that spring has sprung at Clarendon High School, and emotions are running high. Or maybe I’m just becoming more of a hard-ass.

I rarely “write-up,” or refer students to the office, opting instead for the gentler one-on-one conference in the hallway. I have been under the naïve impression that frank, honest conversations will get through to each kid. Now I realize the power and value of the principal’s imposing stature and pain-inducing paddle.

In the first month of this semester, I wrote up 3 kids. This past week, there were 5 write-ups.

I surprised myself this week when I accepted corporal punishment as a necessary evil. I maintain that spanking and paddling are not effective means of behavior management, but only with the caveat that these means are not employed from birth. In other words, my students have been paddled since pre-kindergarten, and it has conditioned them. Some students do not respond unless threatened with corporal punishment because it’s what they know. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this experience, it’s that you can’t change the culture you’ve been thrown into. All you can do is adapt to it.

Thank you sir, may I have another?!

So that’s exactly what I’ve done. Students have quickly realized that I will no longer be lenient. It’s not quite zero tolerance, but there are unforgivable offenses. One of those is swearing.

One of the smartest girls in my 8th grade class also has the worst attitude. She was thrown off the basketball team for talking back to the coach. She once screamed at me in the hall as the principal was passing by. He escorted her to his office, and she returned with a sore rear (she apologized, then requested to stand by her seat for 5 minutes “until it stops stinging”). This past week, she uttered an unforgivable word during class, a vulgar word often direct at homosexuals. I took her out of class and wrote her referral.

While the class review our material, I lectured her on the history of the word — how it refers to the sticks people used to burn heretics alive — and why the word is so offensive. I was shaking with rage as I interrogated her, “How do you think your father, the minister, would feel if he knew you were using this language in school?” She smirked and responded, “He probably be mad.” She was getting increasingly embarrassed and defensive, and after a few more minutes of my ill-advised speech, she exploded. “Why you so offended, Mr. Pepper?! Are you a fa*got?!” My face turned red and I rushed her to the office and dropped her off.

She got one day of in-school suspension, a punishment equal to that for sagging one’s pants in the halls.

Although the principal didn’t understand my complaints when I discussed this blatantly unfair comparison, it’s not going to stop me from calling this girl’s minister father and arranging a conference this week. Let’s see how she behaves in my class then.