Teacherspeak Part 3 (From B to G, with no O in the middle)

More “Teacherspeak” words – things you say as a teacher that would require a huge cloud of volcanic ash to prevent your words flying straight over a child’s head.

After “appropriate,” “audacity” and “apply,” I’ve managed to strain and squeeze out some more words for other letters of the alphabet.

B is for “bare minimum”, which is the amount of work you accuse students of having done when they’ve been lazy bastards. The student immediately considers phoning Childline when he or she gets home, because they think you said something about them having a “bare mini bum”, which is more than a little creepy, and equally disarming is the follow-up accusation that they’ve been “bone idle.”

Teacher: You’ve been bone-idle.
Student: Is that like Pop Idol, but for anorexics?

C is for "consistent". The expectation that if students can do something well, then they have to be able to do it well all of the time. If not, then they become inconsistent.

Teacher writes in mark book: Inconsistent effort.
Student reads in mark book: Blah blah blah effort.

D is for “develop.” You probably throw this word around all over the place. Most confusing is when used in the imperative tense.

Teacher: (Writes when marking) Develop your points a little more!
Student: (Reads) More points.

D is also for “detail.”

Teacher at parents’ evening: What she needs to do is to begin analysing the factors in order to reach an independent conclusion, and to do this, she must learn to make comparisons, evaluate the evidence, assess the different interpretations and communicate her judgements using substantiated evidence that she has selected discriminately from her own research.
Parent, turning to daughter: You hear that? You have to write in more detail.

E is for “exemplary.” A word which you will want to say a lot, won’t know how to spell until after the 100th report you write trying to incorporate it, and which students only understand, because it starts with the same prefix as “excellent.” It sounds like excellent, so it must mean something good. By that reasoning, you could get away with writing “execrable” effort in an exercise book and a student will glow with pride. Perhaps even the phrase, “Your work is excrement.”

F is for “Fuck’s sake,” which can be safely utilised in all of your numerous moments of frustration, because when said under your breath it sounds to everyone more than 2 metres away from you as something no worse an innocuous huffing and puffing.

G is for “gifted and talented,” the current buzzword for children who have a particular gift or talent for one or more areas of the school curriculum. The profession refuses to admit to itself that this form of labelling is immoral, despite willingly teaching students in History that the first of the eight stages of genocide is categorisation. By the time you read this guide, students across the country are likely to find themselves victims of the second stage of genocide, symbolisation. Wearing of Gifted and Talented badges will be made compulsory. Stage 3 is Dehumanisation. Given that the whole concept is about elitism, G and T students considered as being “above” others in terms of gifts and talents, therefore become the “super” men. And as we all know, Superman was an alien and thereby not human.

Stage 4 is organisation, so here at least the slippery path towards genocide grinds to a gradual crawl thanks to the inevitable mud of bureaucracy associated with getting anything done in teaching. It’ll be like trip organising, a process of paperwork, risk-assessment and impact-evaluation, which could only have been devised for satirical purposes by Franz Kafka. However, once accomplished, the fifth stage towards genocide, that is polarisation, comes into force. Logically, if a minority group are identified and labelled as Gifted and Talented, then the remaining majority become Ungifted and Talentless. Stage 6, the victims are identified for stage 7, the extermination. Stage 8 is denial, but I think I’ve given this now-deceased horse enough of a flogging.

Next week, the letter H onwards.