it becomes necessary to tell a student "Alex!* Get your hands out of your pants," you begin to wonder if self-discipline is something of a problem. Don't worry, the situation wasn't quite as lewd as the wording would suggest (he had gym shorts on underneath and was trying to hide his phone while texting), but the phrase caused a ruckus nonetheless.
In other news, Bonnie* was being disruptive during a class today and got moved to the back of the room (isolated from other students). The student then accused the teacher of reviving the practice of making African Americans sit in the back of buses back in the 60s, asked if the teacher was racist, and just generally made the event into a drawn out scene. Ironically, the same student frequently disparages the Chinese and asks me questions like "do you know martial arts," "do you eat Chinese food every day," etc. While my responses generally range from sarcastic to very direct, I don't think the student knows why the questions bother me. I feel like this is going to require a personal discussion at some point, a discussion that I do not look forward to having.
Race is a recurring conversation topic and appears in all different contexts. In another instance today, two students today were making comparisons between being told not to talk during a test and being slaves. Very early in the year, I was accused of being racist for forgetting a student's name. I do not want to avoid the subject, but I have admittedly not mentioned it before, despite its prevalence. At some point in the future, I will write a more fully developed post on the matter, but for now I thought it important to at least acknowledge.
* Names changed to protect the guilty, taken from the list of hurricane names for 2010.
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