I am originally from India and despite my accent, everyone understands me and I am on preferred lists etc. I also get mistaken for being Hispanic (like Currentsubber) and kids start saying,'hola hasta la vista" etc and I have to correct them that I am not Hispanic.
What bothers me is this; why do the kids feel the need to speak Spanish or even just speak with an accent when I am in the class?
This happened from first grade to 7th grade levels. I try to ignore it and just say,"I know....I know...I have an accent" and roll my eyes. One time I got really angry and burst out,"do you know how rude you are" to a 3rd grader.
What is a good, snappy retort without offending the kids??? Is there a way to prevent this from happening??
Thanks so much for any ideas,
thesub
I get that too but with the little ones, it's obviously noticeable that they're just imitating as they imitate their parents' American accent. If I have had any yooung one obviously acting rude, like a 5the grader, I must have handled it with "Do you want me to send you to the office?" or something like that. Frankly, I don't think giving a lecture is wise. It'd just make it look like I am bothered and so I don't. In fact, I am not bothered unless one of the older kids acting up to make the class join him. Even then, unless it is plainly obvious, i.e. he/she is blatantly making it so that I'd notice, I just give the attitude no big deal and then squeeze in a line
casually like this:" We live in a global age". "If you want to do business these days, you'd better learn to unerstand other people's accent", etc. In fact, if the act is too rude, I'd say squeeze in lines like, "You live in this day and age and act like that, you'd not appear very intelligent to your classmates but be my guest".
Recently, at a high school - it's a very good one btw (and this is very diverse school district), there were a couple of Af-Am girls giggling that led to laughing at my misprononcing some names during roll call. I simply told them this: At the end of the day, my getting hired doesn't depend on whether I can pronounce your name right or not". It was a test day. In fact, one of them was a bit late and I was nice enough to make sure that she got a chance to copy things from the slide before I take it away as instructed by the lesson plan. It was obvious that she had her mind made up to make fun of me the moment she entered the room and saw a sub. After I finished roll call, one of them, the louder one in fact, asked me whether she could start the test - it was obvious that she was not asking out of sincerity. Everybody was already working on it before I started doing the roll call as I instructed. I just said, "If you have to ask, you have already lost too much time." (I admit that that was my way of putting her in place.) She laughed at that too with a making-fun sound. Not knowing whether they'd completely quiet down or not, I warned them that if they didn't stop, they'd be leaving the room and moments later, I went to talk to the next door teacher to let him know what's happening. In fact, he was in my class at the beginning of the period, watching a bit as the kid arrived. Though I was going to send them only if they started acting up again, he told me to send them. So, I had to tell them that he wanted them to go there. They still didn't have their act together when they left. I don't know what he told them but when I went to his classroom later for something and I had to pass by these two for something, they didn't dare pull any stunt.
I'd say, don't bother with a lecture and discipline; It's a waste of time since we're not regular teachers. Just be witty about it. In fact, do not even give the demeanor like "I know, I have accent." That's nothing to sound apologizing for. If we're not fit for the job, the district wouldn't have hired us.
