Classroom Management & the "N" Word

So, as a new teacher, you find that there are lots of things you have to learn and learn it quickly. Lesson plans. Studying your craft. Making sure that you stay up on entering all grades and attendance online correctly. Group Educate. Differentiated education. And while worrying about all of that, you have to focus on classroom management and all that the students bring to the table.

In the past few weeks, I have had a student who has been acting out. She makes vocal groans and whines when she doesn't want to take notes. She shows up tardy consistently. She is unfocused and not going to be ready for college if this behavior continues.

Last Friday, she straggles in tardy and shuffles around the room trying to pull everything together for class while the rest of the class is silently reading their books. Someone said something to her, to which she yelled out, "Shut up, N*@@&#!" I promptly asked her to step up to my podium to ask her to step out into the auditorium and have a seat til I was ready to deal with her. I pulled myself together, wrote her up, and paged a school official to come get her.

When we approached her, she got all whiny and said, "Aw Mr. Higdem, you wrote me up?" I then responded, " I wrote you up for being tardy, for disrupting the class who was trying to focus and for saying what you said. I do NOT allow language of that sort in my classroom!"

Here is the clincher...it seems her grandmother is the President of the local chapter of NAACP!!! Totally ironic. How can it be that someone could have such a horrific word in your vocabulary and use it so freely who has someone in their lives who fights so hard against its usage???

I know that it is different for white people when they say it in comparison to when black people say it. It has a different connotation and understanding, but it makes me uncomfortable to hear it. I now know what my friend, Mike McCandless, felt when he had to say it our musical Ragtime. He was so uncomfortable...but that character was defined by its usage.

It is so derogatory and has such a huge stigma attached to it. And now I live in the South and am learning so many things...and pushing so many limits and forcing myself to decide what I will and will not take in my classroom.



UPDATE: After a weekend away, she approached me prior to class and apologized for what she said and how she acted. I am thankful she found her big girl panties, put them on, and brought herself back to adult table instead of sitting at the kiddie one.