Tutoring Reflection 3, 3-3
Greetings,
Today, I went to help tutor during 5th hour in Mrs. Smith’s 8th grade Algebra class. Mrs. Smith put me with two female students, Erin* and J*, and our assignment was on finding slope. During our time together, the two girls, who were apparently friends, got out of hand. To calm them down, and redirect their attention to the task at hand, I addressed them as “Guys”. J then turned to me and responded “We aren’t guys, we are girls.” I quickly recovered myself by stating that I was using the term “guys” in the neutered fashion, and I didn’t mean anything by it. I would like to think about my usage of that particular term for a bit, where it came from, and how it might affect me.
As far as I can tell, I pick up on the term during my time in my High School, and have kept it ever since. In general it seems to be socially acceptable to call a group of people “guys” instead of a more formal greeting. While this is appropriate for more informal speak, I wonder why it that term was chosen instead of “ladies”, “girls”, or some other similar feminine plural term. I would assume that it would be because, generally speaking, socially unacceptable for men to be called a feminine term. This view would be supported by mass media, as it is an insult to soldiers to be called ‘ladies’ by their drill instructor, however, no similar circumstance exists when the sex of the addressee is changed. Another explanation would be that the term, originally inspired by groups of men, thus the term, it spread to slowly spread to groups of mixed company. If forced to come to a final conclusion, I would say that is a combination of the two. The reason why females did not object, en masse, to the term being applied to the groups of mixed company is because they did not perceive it as an insult.
So, now the question becomes, how will this affect me as a teacher. I perceive that, aside from the occasional strident feminist student that will object to that term, I will not get in trouble for calling my classroom, “guys”. However, do I really want to send the message of familiarity to the students? I would see positives and negatives to this. By calling my classroom, ‘guys’, I will be breaking down the wall between the students and I. This would be good, because it might cause students to become more comfortable with me and create a better learning environment. However, this might also allow them to become comfortable enough with me that they will begin to see me as merely a big student, or just a friend, which would cause them to stop listening to me as anything but those things they see me as. But I suppose the latter would be more of an extreme case. Another positive thing is the relative shortness of “guys” versus the more formal, “Ladies and Gentlemen.”
I suppose my main preoccupation with this is finding the balance between establishing a comfortable environment for my students and maintaining a professional attitude that will afford me the respect in the classroom that allows me to teach the students. From these thoughts alone, I would imagine that the best way to start formal, to establish the difference between the students and me, and then slowly allow myself to lapse into the more familiar phrases that are shortcuts.
*Pseudonym used
