Saturday, September 22, 2007

Well Spoken

So, as many of you know, I just recently started working for Booster Enterprises which is an elementary school fund-raising company. I just spent the past two weeks in Louisville, KY working at elementary schools, and I'm really excited to be home now. Anyway... each day during the week or so before the "Fun Run," the Booster team goes into each classroom to talk about a certain character trait, update the class on thier fund-raising success, and hand out prizes. Well, the particular day I'll now be discussing was the "Attitude" day in which we do a talk about coming into school with a big smile and a great attitude. At one section of the talk I point to an individual in the class and say "if he comes into class with a smile, then she'll smile, and she'll smile until the whole class is smiling and has a great attitude." Well, after I pointed at one 5th grade guy and said "and he'll smile" I noticed that the people at that table began to giggle a little, so I asked what was going on and the girl beside the GUY said "she's a GIRL." Wow. I had just called a girl "he" in front of her entire class and then been called out. I should have just left it alone because, prior to asking what was going on, I saw the "guy" motioning to the girl beside "him" to just be quite and not get my attention. Horrible. After I had realized my mistake, I quickly mumbled something like "sorry... I always get confused" (not true... just with pre-pubescent girls with boy haircuts). I think I kind of played it off, but things were a little awkward when the girl (Sarah) was called up in front of the class to recieve her prizes, and I had to hand Sarah her prizes for the day. I don't think I looked in her eyes. I'm just hoping that no irreversible damage was done to poor Sarah's self-image. I'm sure she'll grow up to be a very feminine woman... she will now at least.

Learning to be more careful when announcing genders publically,
Robby

1 comment:

Danielle said...

wow robby. this is quite the predicament. poor little boy-girl. sounds like you might want to give the kids nametags...or learn to address them using gender neutral terminology, like "they" or "he/she" or "this one."