Those Kids

I'm about to go on a small rant, because a few little words are bothering me lately. They're adjectives. Of the demonstrative variety. THESE and THOSE. Sometimes these two words serve as demonstrative pronouns, where they replace nouns. For example, instead of "Wow, the flowers are beautiful," one might say, "Wow, these are beautiful!" But sometimes "these" and "those" can be used as adjectives, as descriptors to nouns, as an add-on to help narrow down exactly what you're discussing. Instead of saying, "Look at the couples! They are dancing and having a great time," you might say, "Look at those couples! They are having a great time." You know, you're helping your audience understand a more specific cross-section of the whole to which you're referring. Add in these and those, the ever-helpful demonstrative adjectives, and you help people figure out exactly whom you're talking about. But I digress.

All of this is just grammar. I was an English major, after all, and most people don't care about all of that anyway. What's the point?

It's not that I'm against demonstratives. They've never done anything to me. It's not their fault. These and those are just as good as any, so I can't really say it's the words with whom I am peeved. It's the people who use them. And, in my opinion, misuse them.

It's odd, because the demonstrative adjectives, THESE and THOSE, are being unnecessarily attached to some humans (who are near and dear to my heart) on a daily basis. I'm finding more and more, especially now that my radar is buzzing for it, that people are using THESE and THOSE for some very special people. For my kids. My class of first grade kids.

Last fall, someone said to me, "Well, teaching at your school, with THESE kids, it's almost like babysitting instead of teaching."

Right before Christmas break, I went to a day-long workshop and was learning alongside teachers from all over the Chicago area. It was centering around how to run and organize the behavior management in your classroom. When I asked a question about a hypothetical interaction with a misbehaving six-year-old, the presenter asked where I taught and the nature of my school. She replied, saying, "Well, I believe this will work for most kids, but THOSE kids especially need boundaries clearly set."

During Christmas break, a well-meaning friend said, "Anna, I can't believe you're still teaching THOSE kids."

Last week, during my grad class, my professor said, "Well with the type of neighborhoods that THESE kids come from, you never know what you're going to get."

Finally, a few days ago, I overheard a fellow teacher (not from my school) saying "THESE kids are just too difficult."

Now I'm not saying my students don't need clear boundaries, or that sometimes it's not overwhelming to be their teacher, or that their neighborhoods are perfect. But I guess I want to call some people out on their grammar. Why THESE? Why THOSE?

Why words specifically chosen to call out a small group from the whole? Why do I never hear about kids from Winnekta being referred to as THESE kids? What do you mean by THESE kids and THOSE kids anyway? Do you mean naughty kids? Poor kids? Chicago kids? Black kids?

The problem, I guess, is that by attaching the THESE and THOSE labels to my students, you'd never think about B, who is reading at nearly a 3rd grade level, comes from a loving family, and asks me at the end of each day if she can "please Ms. Gesch just keep learning because I want to learn all day."

You'd never think of M, who has gone from not knowing the alphabet in August to picking up books and reading the words in them by December.

B and M and all the others aren't THOSE kids. They're MY kids.

THESE and THOSE cut out all the humanity from your brain and cause you to jump to a label instead. I'm not saying I've never in my life fallen into this mindset before, I'm just more sensitive to it now that I know and love my students. I am, however, saying it's time we start choosing words more mindfully.

I have an idea. And once I share this idea, I'll lay off the grammar and stop being so picky, I promise.

Maybe instead of talking about THESE kids and THOSE kids, we could start talking about OUR kids. When we're talking about the challenges facing education, and the topic of  kids ceases to be those, and starts to become ours instead, that's when the conversation is starting to go in the right direction.

Because OUR kids deserve better from us. 

Comma Kazi

(I knew I needed a good title for a grammar and usage post - Thesaurus Rex was a close second-place candidate.)

This weekend was one of road tripping, relaxing, and concerting (yep just made up a verb). I'm starting to actually be at peace on the long road trip - some of my best thinking gets done in that sitch. The once-antsy annoying girl is growing up to be able to sit still! Yeah! The concert I went to was AWESOME. I am a complete poser because to be honest I had never heard of her before seeing her live, but it was for LIGHTS, a band with a really cool girl lead singer with glorious techy accompaniments.  She most definitely was an emo kid in high school, with black hair parted a few millimeters above her ear. That way, the resulting sweeping bangs across her face allow for dramatic, angsty head flips. She also had arms covered in tattoos. Meanwhile, I'm from Wisconsin, employ straight bangs instead of the flippy ones, with solely my eyebrow piercing for any sort of punk credibility. Even so, I think we'll be friends. Maybe LIGHTS will want to meet up with Zooey and I for our weekly Tuesday lunch dates. I'll have to pencil her in.

In addition to all that, this weekend was also one of grammar/usage chaos. I'm no expert. I'm not perfect at grammar. I still refer to eccentric infographics for semicolon usage. But some hilarious and wonderful mishaps were invading my Facebook home feed last night and I had to share a few of them:

- The Your/You're mixups were ubiquitous. There was the classic "your so ignorant" (demonstrating just the opposite to be true), and yet I also found a rare "You're car is still parked here, just FYI." This one was a special find, because it is unusual for the mistaken Facebooker to add an apostrophe to the word. It's much more common for the lazy "your" to reign in every situation. But this particular individual was somewhat of an overachiever in his misuse. I give him props for that.

- Weird phrases were all over the place. My personal favorite was "I could care less." While I understand that this is used all the time, the phrase in actuality indicates the presence of some caring. You are saying the level of care present is not at rock bottom; you could still go down a level on the ladder of caring. To express extreme apathy, I think the phrase we're all going for here is "I couldn't care less," as if to say that you are at the minimum possible level of caring. I honestly could not have less caring for this situation. Some of you couldn't care less about grammar blog posts. To those, I say: I understand. Thank you for communicating your extreme distaste for my post in a quality fashion. Let's try to be friends despite our differing levels of caringness for grammar.

-And now, my all-time favorite of the night. A girl was trying to advertise some things she wanted to sell to anyone who was interested. Fair enough. Underneath a picture of a particular pair of black shoes, she wrote the caption: "Black Satan Shoes: $15.00" Now. I realize she probably meant that the shoes were made of satin and not of some substance related to the Lord of Darkness, but I'm not taking any risks. Satan shoes are no joke. Lucifer can keep his footwear, and I don't care what he thinks about my boycott of his products. That's that.

While I've always thought I hate these mistakes, I discovered last night that I love them. Adds a little flavor to my day. It's just two funny not too laugh, right? Your such a nice person for reading my blog, by the way. Your too kind, really.