However, during 5th period, which is the class that has the most taxing effect on my energy and patience, a slightly more difficult than usual bell-ringer was enough distract them from the task at hand. The bell-ringer was a sentence that contained a misplaced phrasal modifier and a passive voice verb, which in the students' defense was more difficult than correcting verb tense or adding necessary punctuation.
As much as I wished that their literacy skills were sufficient to be able to at least understand my explanation, their difficulty in doing so was not my main concern. Rather, I encountered an all too common attitude among students: the belief that the importance of language is subjective -- as one of my students expressed, "It doesn't matter what I say or how I say it as long people know what I mean."
Typically my classroom demeanor is calm, and I try to be as light-hearted and goofy with the students as I can. But at this student's comment, I snapped. At one time in my like, this would mean raising my voice and asserting how right I am as opposed to how wrong other involved parties happen to be. But I made a decision long ago to never deal with my students in such a way. Instead, I lowered my voice (so that students would have pay closer attention), slowed the pace of my speech, and explained my belief about the importance of language. Among other comments, I shared with them:
Language will either enslave you or set you free. I am here because I do not want you to be someone else's slave.
My seriousness caught the students off-guard. Some of them it probably didn't benefit; but they heard a perspective on language that was new to them. And perhaps something, over time, will come of it.
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