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Stories that matter

Sh*t My Students Write And Its Flaws

Posted by Belia Mayeno Saavedra on May 12, 2011

Shit My Students Write and Dumb $#!% My Students Say are new meme-sites poking fun at the fumbles and goofs of students. Classroom quotes and essay excerpts are posted by teachers and take the basic meme formula from Shit My Dad Says and other quick-and-dirty quotables. But at a time when schools across the country are suffering severe budget cuts, and students enter institutions with increasingly limited resources, what are these sites bringing to the conversation about education?

I once had a particularly tough day of teaching and wrote this as my Facebook status.

“2day: A student eloquently explained to his male peers how it’s unfair that women be expected to do more housework & childcare. Minutes later, the very same kid threw his unwanted muffin at the wall & clowned me for my big-ass pimple and told me I was hella old and that’s why my skin is “falling apart.” Cada cabeza es un mundo FOR REALS.”

That last part is a common folk saying in Spanish: “Each mind is a world.”

And even though it was a rough day, it was also a beautiful illustration of the way that this student’s head was, indeed, an entire world; he could share thoughtful reflections in one moment and then be completely antagonistic in the next. Just like most of us.

However, there’s a problem. When we publicly share stories like this about young people, as on blogs mentioned above, we don’t have control over the ways these stories will be understood or circulated. In some ways, it’s similar to the problem of losing out on a new job because there’s a random Facebook photo of you drunkenly waving a purple glitter vibrator at a friend’s bachelorette party. We live in public and out of context. And now that teachers are blogging student stories, or tweeting teenage bon mots, the intimacy of the learning process, with all of its embedded mistakes and miscalculations, is open to judgment by complete strangers.

In my case, most of the comments I got in response to the above post, online, and in person, were about “knuckleheads,” “little shits acting up” or how “we’re doomed” if this is the way that kids act these days. A quick survey of comments on the Shit My Students Say blog — and twitter feed — reflects the same mixture of dismissal and hand-wringing.

After getting feedback on my post, I had to stop and reflect on the compulsion to share these classroom moments. Sure, it’s mildly entertaining to read an essay excerpt where a kid uses the word “urine” in place of the word “yearn.” But is there another reason why Shit My Students Write is going viral? Am I feeding into an already dominant culture of mocking youth for doing exactly what they’re supposed to do — make mistakes?

The question gets even more complicated when we consider the ways that race and class play into these memes. One Shit My Students Say entry specifically identifies the teacher as working in an “urban” school setting, which most people readily read as black, brown and poor. In another tweet, the teacher gives a few clues which would lead readers to believe that she is herself white, while her students are African-American. When I quote my students, I repeat their exact language, which sometimes includes grammar common to African-American Vernacular English. But that means I need to be extra thoughtful when I relay stories of muffin-flinging aggression or a goofed-up word- because the stories teachers share don’t exist in a vacuum. We’re sharing them in the context of a culture which often assumes ignorance and/or criminality is embedded in youth, in blackness, in poverty. That means our stories can be appropriated and interpreted as evidence against the people we’ve dedicated our professional lives to serving.

Like this moment: “Wait, Puerto Rico is like, a place? Cuz I heard that Puerto Rican is when your moms is Black and your pops is Mexican. That’s how you get a black dude with a last name like Ortiz or Lopez or some shit.”

I repeated this to a puertorriqueña friend out at dinner one night. We laughed- the way we laugh when a younger cousin does something cute but slightly misguided. But the laughter that came from a group of white dudes ear-hustlin’ at the next table was different. It was that at laughter, not the with kind. (The kind of laughter Dave Chappelle says made him question his comedic choices, after hearing it come from a white crew member when Dave used the word “n-gg-r.”) One of the men at the table then made an offhand comment about Oakland- a majority black and Latino city- producing “dumbasses.” But since all of this took place in person, it was only a relatively small uncomfortable moment. I can only guess how it would have played out if we were all cloaked in internet anonymity, which is pretty much like Popeye’s spinach for racists, homophobes and general jerks.

However, even after this, I don’t want to give up sharing stories. The moments when students offer brilliant insight or make me bust out laughing are the best parts of my job. Ultimately, the problem is not the stories, but the lack of reflection and context. So here are a few moments I found to be worth reflecting upon. Imagine my comments in teacherly red ink, please.

1) February 7th, 2011: “I’ma get my PhD. If you get a PhD you get to make up fake-ass words and put them in the dictionary. I always hecka wanted to write the dictionary.” The student understands that advanced graduate degrees are used to legitimize knowledge production. He also comprehends that words coined by academics aren’t necessarily any more “real” than slang.

2) March 15th, 2011. “What’s bi-polar? Is that like when you get really upset when you’re cold?” Although not necessarily arriving at an accurate conclusion, the student is actually going through a complex linguistic reasoning process. He’s trying to reconcile a new word connotation associated with being upset with something that he already understands as having to do with polar bears and snow.

3) January 30th, 2011: “Miss Belia, is you mixed with something? Because when you smile you look like that one Pokemon.” Ok, this one’s just funny. I’ve got a round yellow face and when I laugh my eyes squinch up like little apostrophes. I’m basically Pikachu in a wig.

And in case you’re wondering about the kid who threw the muffin and told me I was getting raggedy at the ancient age of 30, he went on to become one of the most reliable, thoughtful and motivated students in class. In other words, his life as a learner was, and is, a trajectory, not a 140 character tweet. But still, I’m keeping an eye out for #ShitMyStudentsTaughtMe.

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  5. NYU Minority Students Fall Prey To Stereotypes
  • janjan

    Well put. Yes, but please keep sharing your stories about the classroom because I think the world at large needs to see/read more about what actually goes on in the learning process while they are busy arguing about taking dismantling public education, especially when it comes from a compassionate, conscious voice like yours.

  • Warren Ritter

     Yes, I think think by blogging about shit that happens in class is hugely important, should they be held in context. However, since we know that the internet is not the place for context, or reflection maybe posts should be geared toward more insightful moments. We’ve all said some dumb shit in class throughout our lives and felt like an ass in front of our classmates. Now, imagine it was all over the internet too.  

    Because these private moments could also be flipped against the student, being ridiculed in class,    or on the internet, and can be used to argue for dismantling the public education system, it’s clearly not working, lets get rid of it, blogging about those moments may be bringing the public into what should be held private. 

  • Miguel Sanchez

    I really appreciate your comments on this. I’ve been an ESl teacher in Japan for eight years, and it’s a different context than teaching in public school in America, but it’s just as important for teachers here to remember that their students are children in the process of learning, and that it’s ok to laugh at funny things the kids say, they shouldn’t be made to feel bad or marginalized because of them.

    Names like “Shit My Students Say” are inherently venomous, in my opinion. I honestly think anyone who would name a site like that shouldn’t be a teacher. 

  • http://twitter.com/6other jana brubaker

    Well, if I learned nothing else in grad school it is that you are not responsible for other folks’ reactions, and most likely they are getting from your writing or other work what they are bringing to it. For instance, all of the stories you shared about your students I find sweet and inspiring, laughing-with rather than laughing-at, but probably racist classist homophobes are going to hear sarcasm and jeering. Please do keep sharing your stories, and recall that you are speaking to an audience of other empathetic, compassionate human beings in awe of your determination to remain in a profession currently under fire. The tossed muffin story doesn’t really seem to jive with the current blame-the-teachers atmosphere in education politics, does it? More linguistic and visual analysis here: http://bit.ly/eYyMRp

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_ZYWRQJYVTIXAL33U354TAEU5IQ Ami

     This is excellent :)  TY so much for it.  A lot of the stuff in the “s- my students wrote” vein is v problematic :  And many seem racist or ablist :(  There’s a power differential here that’s not in stuff like “The Customer Is Not Always Right” which makes even ones that aren’t problematic in -ist ways still seem like mocking (not the ones you’ve listed here :)  those are genuinely cute and thought provoking :) ) because teachers are educated adults and to expect kids to match up to them and their standard of what it means to be “intelligent”… it feels almost like bullying :  

  • Anonymous

    The person that came up with this blog is the kind of ‘teacher’ who probably will be dealt with violently one day by their students. 

  • http://twitter.com/NotasMias TLG

    Hahaha, I am a PhD-seeking POC graduate student and your student’s reason for wanting a PhD made me smile. It is super honest and, as your commentary noted, shows an understanding about what higher degrees can give you. I wish him luck!

  • Anonymous

     Hmmm… This has made me think. I guess one reason I haven’t been as sensitive to this is that I’m a Grad Student teaching Undergrads. In a lot of ways my Power Differential is smaller than those of many other sorts of teachers. I also when I have bemoaned student mistakes they have tended to be subject matter questions relating to my class. Even then, this does point out some of the ways this is problematic at least when shared with the internet at large rather than friends or family.

    I need to rethink some of my actions.

  • Anonymous

    Sorry, but this sounds like pure spin.

    It reads to me like you’re seeking excuses for your student’s tactlessness, disrespect and bad behaviour. It’s far easier to find something positive in any negative act than to rectify it and ensure it never happens again.

    I sincerely hope that your reaction in the classroom differed greatly from the impression you give in the article or you’re not helping these kids at all.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=562795124 David Warren

    You are so right.  I’m not Spanish or Latino, I’m straight up Canadian WASP who works in a group home for boys. I have found them both extremely challenging, ‘fun’ and they have taught me so much about myself and my own two boys and the challenges I will face when Timmy & Nate become teenagers in 5-8 years.  Let’s take tonight  for example, I was reminded by more than one of the boys that we staff don’t live there and can’t know what it’s like.  I’ve heard this before and dismissed it but tonight for some strange reason it did stick with me and it’s so true.  It starts off with what is known as professional distance.  We aren’t supposed to become ‘enmeshed’ or ‘love’ or care about these boys even though they could be our own children.  A lot of the rules have to do with things other than ‘the best interests of the boys’ or trying to ‘normalize’ the house for them and really try to prepare them for the ‘real’ world.  I’m not afraid to tell the boys i care about them or to call them out when they go to far but i’m slowly learning to accept their calling me out.  I’m not perfect and lord knows there are times when i bring a little baggage from home which in turn ‘colours’ my handling of them.  So thank you boys i do appreciate the give and take involved in ‘work’.  You are helping me become a better ‘man’.  And thank you Belia for a very interesting read :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=562795124 David Warren

    if it brings out the kind of teacher & teaching my kids are receiving, it’s doing a public service and shouldn’t be swept under the rug.  as others have said, here we see teachers are as thoughtless and ‘ignorant’ as some of their students.  wait how old are the teachers?  and how old are the students.. hmm.. it’s hard to tell who are the mature ones are…

  • PhDGal

    You’re not a teacher, are you.

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