Amy Adoyzie

The lower right corner of my white board is sectioned off into a space designated as the “Word Box,” where a new vocabulary word and definition are featured daily. I teach vocabulary with a purpose, there’s usually a reason or a story behind the words. Perhaps I want them to be familiar with the concept of objectivity, so objective is housed inside the Word Box for a day. Or in an attempt to give them a better understanding of contemporary spoken English, they learn what awesome means and how to use it.
In order for students to have a well-rounded knowledge of English, they ought to learn the informal phrases and words that we use daily- a handful of which may not be pleasant. You know, bad words, derogatory words.
Many of them knew the words, but didn’t know what derogatory meant. After I taught the word, I asked if they knew any derogatory words for women. “Bitch” came up in my last class, but only half of them knew of the word.
“Who doesn’t know this word?” I asked. A half dozen hands raised slowly. I’m not sure why I did the following, but I did it and it’s one of the my most bizarre teaching moments.
As a way of acknowledging the young women who didn’t know the word, I pointed around at them and as if to say, “Oh, okay, you don’t know the word? That’s alright. Let me teach it to you.” But instead of uttering, “You, you, you…” I randomly called them all bitches. Seriously.
When we realized that I had just inadvertently did, the entire class giggled nervously.
I was almost in tears from laughing.
On that list of Things To Do in Bangladesh, calling my class a bunch of bitches was certainly not on it. But this is the beginning of a new list entitled Things To Not Do. This list should have been created years ago, but I’m sure I won’t have any trouble filling it up in the next fifteen and a half months.