Pig

Today I got the angriest I've ever been in class. The constant talking, the throwing of pieces of paper, the reading in class, the playing of games when I've explicitly said they can't play, even the occasionally hitting, kicking, or tripping has never made me this mad.

We were learning the letter Ii, focusing on the short vowel sound as in "is", "it", and "pig". My fifth graders have a very spotty foundation in English, so we've been starting from the basics, and I haven't taught pig yet. That'll come in a couple of weeks. But since it's one of the best simple words for remembering the short Ii sound, I've been mentioning it in each class.

The class I taught today hadn't had English in a full two weeks (the intervening classes were cancelled for the teaching competition and the teacher's rehearsal, in addition to last Friday's holiday). So they were the last to learn Ii. And they reacted in a way none of the other classes had.

As soon as I mentioned the word pig they laughed and started pointing to a chubby girl in the back of the class, calling her a pig. She, naturally enough, started crying and put her head down on the desk. And I got angry.

I was so angry I didn't even know what to say to them. So I told them that. I just stood there silently for about a minute. The class looked relatively abashed. "Would you like me to call you pigs?" I asked them. I got a few nos. And moved on with the lesson.