11:04 p.m. - 2008-07-08
workity work work.
Today I taught the older kids' class a lesson on formal vs informal speech. I recently read a good article about how kids living in poverty often do not pick up on social cues that clue us into what type of communication is appropriate. I started out by explaining the difference and then asking for some examples of "greetings" that would qualify as casual, like how they might greet their friends. Here is what they offered:
What's up?
Sup?
Yo yo yo.
What's crackin'?
What's good in da hood?
How ya'll been doin'?
Then they listed formal greetings:
How are you?
Nice to meet you.
Good morning.
Good afternoon.
Hello.
Then casual parting words:
See ya.
Peace out (hee hee, didn't tell them I say this one, too.)
Later.
Man-bye. (???) I inquired because at first it sounded like "Main-bah!" and was said with this dismissive hand gesture. They said it's like when someone won't stop talking and you're trying to leave so you cut them off with "Man,bye!"
Then formal:
Nice meeting you.
Take care.
See you soon.
Have a nice day.
Then we did some role playing where they had to greet each other, introduce themselves and shake hands. I realized, trying not to laugh, that they have no idea how to shake hands appropriately. So I ended up explaining:
Grip firmly - don't be limp or crush!
Meet web of your hand with web of their hand
Pump up and down, once or twice
Make eye contact - don't look down!
They kept forgetting one or two parts so I ended up writing the following on the board:
Grip firmly
Meet webs
Pump twice
Eye Contact
I then panicked because this list looked like some sort of directions for mating so I added a couple more words to make it look less scandelous.
It was actually a really fun lesson - they laughed a lot when I would repeat their "casual" greetings - and we all laughed while they tried to remember everything at once to get through an introduction. They were kind and supportive of each other, which is more heartwarming than you can believe. I think they liked it and will actually remember some of it.
I don't get to do this kind of thing often enough because of the other stuff I do - staff evaluations, grant writing and coordination, parent relations, recruitment, discipline, band-aid application, yelling at the food delivery management, field trip arrangements, policy development, etc. But this is the kind of stuff that I really truly enjoy. The fact is, once you get good at something and you show some leadership potential, somebody will eventually put you in charge. The beauty of that is that you get to create systems that you believe in. The tough part is that you have to give up some of what you love doing, in order to equip and support others to do it. But I'm one of the lucky few who is doing what I am meant to be doing at this juncture and that is good enough for me.
Tomorrow, I am giving a 1.5 hour lecture to a master's level child development class. This is hilarious to me, on a variety of levels. The sensible part is that I'm speaking on working with "at risk" youth. The hilarious part is that I've never taken a single child development class in my life and have not even begun my master's degree. However, once I got past my anxiety and sat down to collect my thoughts, I found - I actually have a lot to say and am rather looking forward to it. I'm sure something incredibly embarrasing will happen though because that is how I roll.
