Mini-Hiatus
Mini-Hiatus
& thoughts on introductions & pronouns & safety
Hi all! I am still adjusting to beginning a new job and teaching three new classes at a whole new level (having moved from teaching high school to college), and so alas, I was unable to give Jericho Brown and Ada Limón’s gorgeous sonnets the time that they needed today. Today, it was a question of: could I get my lesson plans done, grades in, food cooked, write this essay, and still get enough sleep? The answer was sadly no. But I hope you’ll stick around and know that more essays are brewing. I am hoping to give myself a bit more time to generate these posts and then return on a weekly(ish) basis.
In the meantime, a quick word about introductions at the start of the school-year since I know that for several of you reading this, that will be starting soon, if it hasn’t already begun.
Unless it’s already an established norm at the school you work at (and even then, use caution and careful judgment of your particular classroom community situation), please avoid asking students to share their gender pronouns out loud on day one and please don’t call them “preferred” gender pronouns— they’re just their actual pronouns. These kinds of conversations on the first day, while often well-intentioned, can cause harm: namely, a student whose gender identity does not match others’ expectations can singled out or someone who is just not ready to share that part of their identity may feel pressured to do so.
What to do instead:
Share your pronouns, if it’s safe to do so, and do so without making a big fuss. I often will just write my name on the board, followed by pronouns, and my email.
Provide students with a get-to-know you sheet where you ask for what pronouns they are comfortable with you using for them in class. It’s important to phrase it this way because a student may have pronouns they do not want others to be publicly aware of. Whether or not they share that with you is up to the individual student (and not for you as their teacher to pry into). What you do need to know is what pronouns will make a student feel safe in your class and to use those consistently.
If you mess up, apologize, correct yourself, and move on. Do not make a big deal out of it, as this centers your discomfort over the student’s safety. Try to avoid making this mistake and recognize that it can happen: what matters is what you do next, which, ideally is to not make the situation about you and to simply affirm the student’s correct pronouns.
Make it clear in your classroom norms that your classroom community does not tolerate misgendering anyone or discrimination against any identity category. Emphasize this early on, and make it clear in your words and actions as a teacher. I would often add this to my syllabus and make sure that students would sign an acknowledgement of this during the first week.
Lastly, as an English teacher, I get the following question a lot: “isn’t ‘they’ only for more than one person?” 99% of the time this question isn’t asked in good faith, so my patience is wearing thin. To be clear, I have a strong feeling most readers of this newsletter are not among the people who do ask this question, but you might be around those who will and it’s to those folks that my annoyance is directed. Here’s what to tell them, English teacher approved:
“They” has been in usage as a singular pronoun since at least the time of Shakespeare, and I mention Shakespeare specifically since he frequently used “they” as a singular pronoun.
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) released a statement in 2018 affirming the validity of “they” as a singular pronoun and in fact, encouraging its use when the gender of who is being referenced is not specified. In particular, writers should definitely use “they” over the frankly ridiculous “he/she” that folks insist on peppering in their writing still—to this day—in the year of our Lord 2022. Seriously, why? I’m currently teaching the APA research writing process and the APA agrees: “they” is the preferred pronoun in place of “he/she.” Let it go and let’s go.
And let’s say the above weren’t true. Let’s say all the dead favorite authors didn’t use “they” and the NCTE decided to say “they” was incorrect. At the end of the day, “correct grammar” (ooh, I could write a whole other essay on the racist/classist implications of what that means) matters less than the safety and well-being of your students. To be clear, “they” as a singular pronoun is correct, according to standard use, affirmed by the NCTE and APA style. And . . . grammar matters less than your students’ lives. And yes, correctly gendering your students is a matter of life and death, and I hope you treat it as such because whether or not your students feel safe in your classroom matters more, I think, than anything else you can teach them. Nothing else in my curriculum will count for anything if a student feels that who they are, as they are, is not affirmed by their teacher and the classroom community they are a part of. As teachers, we have a responsibility to make that happen and respecting pronouns is the floor—the bare minimum of what we should do for our students.
Wow, I have written way more than anticipated, and while it’s not about sonnets, I do—as you’ve probably guessed—think this is even more important.
I will, in fact, be back with more lesson plans and the next one on sonnets on Friday, September 23rd. I am thinking of switching over to Fridays, given my current schedule, and so I will try that out for a time. While it is not ideal for me to go on this hiatus from publishing these newsletters now, I do want to create more of a backlog of these so that I can give myself more time to draft, write, and revise. I emphasize that for my students, but have not been extending the same process for myself and I need more time to do so. So . . . see you on September 23rd. Stay groovy.