You can't say that here!

I finished teaching summer school classes the other day. I taught three 90-minute, 15-day classes based on whatever I thought 10 or more students would be interested in signing up for. See, Hudson Middle School has this neat summer program where teachers can sign up to teach classes they think would be fun. If at least ten students sign up for these classes, then the school will pay the teacher to teach that class. Some of the classes are things like volleyball, jazz band, photography and so forth. I decided to teach Book Club, Dog Training and Improv, and I was lucky enough to have all three classes fill up.

It was a crazy busy and stressful three weeks, but also very fun. One thing that was a new experience was teaching the Improv class. Now, I'm no expert improver, but I've done it for a long time and I've taught other subjects long enough to know that it's more important to be a good teacher, than to be an expert at the subject. So, for three weeks I tried (sometimes in vain) to get middle school kids to be real in front of their classmates. I tried to get them to take their hands out of their pockets, speak loudly, stay away from the back wall of the stage, and not have every scene be three too-cool-for-school middle schoolers standing around staring at each other and wondering what to do next. I tried to get them to shed their stiff "cool" shell and have some movement and emotion in their bodies. I tried to get them to care about the scene they were in....which they don't want to do, because as soon as they try hard at something, as soon as they're invested, the possibility of failure blocks out any benefits that could possibly come from succeeding.
Anyhow, as I was trying to get them to do those things, a few swears may have slipped out. See, in a dog training class, or a book club, or any English class I've ever taught, I would never say bad words in front of students. However, teaching a theater class is a whole different ballgame. You've got to be much more real. Everything is more in the moment. You can't be the same type of teacher you would be for a math class. So, in the course of the three weeks, I may have said a few naughty words, such as "dammit!" or "hell!"
Well, this came back to bite me on my last day of teaching. I was in the office saying goodbye to the principal when out in the hallway we hear a student shout, "You bastard!" The principal looked alarmed and was about to go out to the hallway to take care of it when we hear, "You can't say that! Only Ms. Allsop can say bad words at school!"
Oops.