Good things, dumb things, bad things.

[mothwing]

Good: Mrs Homophone 2010 can pronounce a TH now. No one had explained to her before that the "th" is a lisped s, and now she gets things right at least when she's reading. Her speaking is still largely TH-free, but her reading has improved absolutely beautifully. It's weird how people can imitate speech impediments without problems (I made her read an entire page while "lisping"), and then get it right (and made her re-insert the "s"s afterwards), and the level of improvement completely knocked me out.

Dumb: I swear I'm a good, inconspicuous businessdyke when I'm at work. I don't run around all "LOOK AT MAH RAINBOW BRACELET!", but things follow me and I can't help it. I teach three teenage boys on Fridays, they're between twelve and fourteen. Today, my students invited me to join their masculinity affirmation ritual.

Failstudent, randomly, to other student: "Are you gay?"
Me (talking to another student) "Oy, watch it."
FS: "Yeah, sorry! ... Are you gay?"
Other student: "Eh?"
FS: "Are you gay?"
OS: "...the hell? Uh, Maybe?"
FS: "No, it's a thing. Are you gay??"
OS: "Are you?"
FS: "No."
Me: "What on earth are you guys doing?"
FS: "It's a thing. You ask: 'Are you gay?', and the other person has to answer and that answer... well, speaks for itself, really. See? Oy, are you gay?"
OS: "No, you?"
FS: "No! See, Ms Moth? Ms Moth, are you gay?"
Me: "I'm a woman. How does that make sense?" (The German word for 'gay's is more genderspecific than the English 'gay', which is used for women, too, these days. I was being deliberately obtuse in the hope that seeing that this actually applies to people IRL would make them reconsider their choice of "thing".)
FS: "No, see, it's a thing. You just say - look, are you gay?"
Me: "No, I'm a lesbian."
FS: "No, that's not the point."
AS: "Really?"
Me: "Yep. Still don't see the point of this 'thing', though."
FS: "Ugh, never mind."
OS: "Really?"
FS: "What- seriously? Oh. So, which of you is the guy?"
Me: "In your relationship, which of you is?"
FS: "Well, me, obviously...?"
Me: "Why is that so obvious?"
FS: "Well, I'm a guy."
Me: "Well, and I'm not. What does that tell you about me...?"
FS: "... you're... also the guy?"
Me: "No. I'm a woman."
FS: "But, you know, in a normal relationship, there's one man and one woman, so in a relationship with two women, there has to be one who is the man?"
etc. (Don't do that, it's silly - Ok (read: Noted. Not cool in your class.))

I think this exchange is brought to you by FS feeling slighted during that lesson because his friend worked together with OT and, uncharacteristically, made a joke at his expense. Usually, he and his friend gang up on OT because he's a bit of a misfit and plays for a different football team, and this was his attempt at getting at him with this ritualised dig at his masculinity to which outsiders can only answer the wrong way.

At first, he answered "wrongly" ("Maybe?"), to the hilarity of FS, and then got it - non-ridiculed people are not gay, and playing along means denying gayness and handing the question back ASAP. FS is a nice guy, so he was offering me a part in their game by asking me and giving me the opportunity to play along (in a masculinity-affirmation-game nonetheless. I guess I ought to be flattered or something?). Taking the question seriously is breaking the game - and that's what it is for them.
It's weird, but in terms of social cred currency, gayness-denial seems to be on one level with coming up with a new funny name for pooing, which never seems to fail to please. It was actually next up after gayness denial today.

Now all I need to do is to find a way to encourage these kids to find other ways to affirm themselves, without doing so at the expense of others, while they're still talking to me that way and I have a chance of noticing.

Bad: One of my students failed his exam and I don't really know why. He was doing so well, and even though he still has obvious gaps, nothing prepared me for the total wreckage of his last exam; he's not doing himself justice in the content, and the language is all over the place. He can't even bear to look at the paper and he's really demotivated.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

I am reminded very strongly of a "game" the kids used to play on the bus when I was six or seven. It went like this:

Questioner (usually someone of medium or high popularity): "Are you PT?"

Unlucky Victim (someone of low popularity, i.e. me): "What? What does PT stand for?"

The questioner would keep pushing until the unlucky victim came up with a yes-or-no answer. Of course, every answer would be wrong. I don't remember what PT stood for when the Unlucky Victim answered "Yes," but I know that when the Unlucky Victim answered "No," the Questioner crowed gleefully, "You're a Pregnant Teenager!"

In any case, yuck. I can only hope your students have learned something from trying that one on you.

[mothwing.livejournal.com]

I hope so, too! I'll talk to them again next Friday.

We had that kind of game, though I can't really remember the words. I think it was about who had a crush on whom, and cootie-related games, though it's called "pest" in German.