Bow Tie o’ the Day is covered in Santa-hatted yellow labs, but for the sake of this story, think of them as white coyotes. Bow Tie’ll fit this Baltimore story better if you do.
After teaching writing to adults for years at The University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College, I made a switch to teaching middle schoolers in Baltimore. It was culture shock in a variety of ways, not the least of which was that I was a white woman from a heavily rural state in a city whose residents are primarily black. ALL of my middle school students were black. We shared our culture shock with each other.
During a class I was teaching in my first year at Booker T. Washington Middle School, two girls named Keisha got into a verbal argument. I heard one chair slide out from under a desk, then a second chair, and I knew what that meant: FIGHT! I managed to jump over a row of desks and land right between the Keisha’s before one of the Keisha’s fists almost hit the other Keisha’s face. My face was in the way of its trajectory, but the Kiesha with the fist was able to redirect her fist quickly enough that it barely grazed my ear. The other Kiesha said, “Dang! You old white coyote.” I knew enough to know it was not meant as a compliment. I had ruined what the two Keisha’s and the rest of the class thought would have been a bloody fight.
But I chose to take being named a white coyote as a compliment anyway. A coyote is swift. A coyote can leap. A coyote can sense danger. The class waited for me to respond to the almost-fight, and to what they called “being called out my name.” They were waiting for The White Coyote to dispense consequences. I ignored the whole fight stuff. The Keisha’s sat back down. I said, “I’ve killed coyotes. My dad showed me how. Have you ever heard of “calling in” a coyote?” And they paid attention to every word I said about coyotes, and how important coyote hunting was in my family. They asked questions. They were focused. They learned. It was a teacher’s dream: a teachable moment. I had them in the palm of my teaching hand until the bell rang.
The next morning, my assistant principal came to my room before school and said to me, “I was walking past your classroom yesterday, and I noticed you weren’t teaching punctuation. You’re supposed to be teaching your students punctuation this week.” So much for teachable moments.
Yeah, cuz punctuation is the most important thing in the world to learn about. Not.