Friday, February 3, 2012

Teachable Moments


Earlier today in my Young Adult Literature class. My professor was telling the class about how

she learned a new word from one of the novels we will be reading. The word that she learned happened to be the word "fuckery" and she told us that she had never heard of the word before. Myself

and another student of color both recognized the word and have heard it and even used it on multiple

occasions. The professor, realizing that the two of us were familiar with the word, said to the class "May I

make a 'race statement'? I notice that the two of you lovely ladies are the only ones that knew

what this word meant. Maybe this is a cultural thing? The author of this book IS African

American." After this, class continued and proceeded as usual. As the class was winding down, the

professor announced to the class "Class, I've done something bad; something you NEVER want to do

when you become teachers. I singled out two students because of their race. You NEVER want to

single out a student based on anything! And I hope you two ladies will accept my apology." So

there you have it folks! A teachable moment right there.

3 comments:

  1. I was in this class and I truly believe that this was a "teachable moment". Being that I was one of the students who did not know what this word was I was extremely glad that you could educate me on the definition of this word. Now I will be able to know what the word means when I read this book!

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  2. I'm wondering how it made you feel to be a part of that teachable moment? I know you probably know the professor and feel comfortable in the class, but if you were a high school student would you feel differently?

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  3. I was in this class too and it was definitely a teachable moment. As soon as the words came out of her mouth I thought to myself "Oh no she didn't." The truth is a few days after this happened I was browsing the web, on Pinterest, my newest obsession, and I came across someone with a pin-board titled "This actually exists, absolute fuckery," where they posted ridiculous inventions and things that they found that just completely blew their mind. I also then googled the word and urbandictionary.com came up with a few definitions for the word. This was definitely a learning experience for everyone in the classroom!

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