What you say to students: Teacherspeak (Part 2 - still "A")

Following on (as opposed to “following through” as I’ve heard people say in meetings, though never actually smelt them do) from the first blog about “Teacherspeak” - the condition in which you the teacher becomes “Lost in Teaching” by using language that is almost meaningless (or at best anachronistic) to students - I would like to move from the pointlessness of “appropriate” to another A-word you may feel a compunction to utter, and that is “audacity.” 

A strange old word this, in that it is flattering to be labelled “audacious,” as it suggests boldness in the face of overwhelming odds, and yet it is insulting to be charged with the crime of “audacity.” People have a right to be audacious, but no right to show audacity. That would be “entirely inappropriate!” 

Teacher: I’ve just caught you bunking out of school to go to the shop, and you have the audacity to eat that chocolate bar in front of me? 

Student: (Thinks) Audacity must mean teeth. 

These words are not the preserve of the more aged amongst your profession. Within months, even novice teachers are mimicking their older colleagues, having subliminally soaked up their parlance, and are already flopping their appropriates and audacities about all over the place. 

Not that I was intending to compile a whole A-Z of Teacherspeak, but the next is another word beginning with A and marks our journey from the spoken to the written word. You may consider this phrase technical language and therefore suitable for reports as well as oral interjections when students are not working hard enough: 

“You need to apply yourself more.” 

Now, the idea of applying anything without it coming out of a small, circular tin with a sponge and mirror is totally alien to a great many 15-year old girls. These are the same girls who think that a foundation tier is a blob of make-up not yet smoothed onto the skin rather than the exam paper that the less clever kids do. As for the boys, who knows how they translate the instruction to “apply themselves” more? It sounds rather too much like something they’d prefer to do behind a closed door and not in a classroom. As adults, the usage changes, and we all think of “applying” for jobs. And in the interviews we might get for those jobs, we don’t sit there and boast to the panel how we “apply ourselves a lot,” because that’s just Yoda’s way of saying he’s gone for loads of jobs and not had much luck. I’m tempted next to see if I can maintain this alphabetical run and impress you with a B, a C, a D and so on. Next blog next week, we’ll see…