Bad Words

Everyday I take some time to read aloud to my fifth graders. We chose a book by a wonderful children’s author, Jerry Spinelli. It is called “Who Put That Hair in My Toothbrush.” The book was excellent and the kids were really starting to get into it. As I was reading today, this captivating book took a turn for the worse.

I’m reading along and come to a sentence that says, “Do you think there are any virgins in California?” A book aimed at 10, 11, and 12 year olds is talking about virgins!  I instantly paused, taken aback. All 24 of my students immediately drew silent and didn’t move. They couldn’t figure out why I had stopped reading. I recovered as quickly as I could, substituting teenager for the word virgin. I know, I know, it made no sense at all, but I was in a bind. None of the kids questioned it. They probably just thought they didn’t understand it.

In the past whenever I have come across inappropriate words, I have been easily able to substititue them, and move on with no indication of the missed word. The story moves on from the bad language without losing meaning. However, today, that was not the case. With just a glimpse, my eye caught the words virgin, sex, virginity, and sexy in the text ahead. I stopped in my tracks.  There’s no way it says that. Did Jerry Spinelli really write this book? I must be mistaken. Maybe, someone named Jerry Spinetty wrote the book and I only saw the Jerry Spin part, and assumed it was Spinelli. Because the same author who just last year had my fourth graders gushing over his book, “Loser,” and doing somersaults over “4^th Grade Rats,” couldn’t have written this book! Or, maybe my mind was in a really dirty place today and I was imagining these words on the page. I did a double take to be sure. The words were definitely right there on the page.

As I closed the book and a look of fear took over the kids’ faces. They didn’t move a muscle, scared that they had done something wrong to make me stop reading. Fear was definitely present in the classroom. Still being only the 5^th day of school, I couldn’t let them sit there in fear. I admitted to the kids, “I can’t read this book anymore.” I didn’t know what else to do. I had no other clever ideas on how to get around this. As any inquisitive 10-year old would want to know, they asked, “Why, Mrs. Gorski?” I was blunt, and told these innocent children there were bad words in the book and I just couldn’t read on. Of course, they wanted to know what bad words. One girl commented, “A bad word like stupid?” I responded that I had no problem reading stupid, but these were some pretty bad words and that I’d like someone to go get me a new book to read. They eagerly shot up and retrieved a book.

My sweet 5^th graders told me that I should throw the book out.  I was impressed by this. I know that when I was in 5^th grade, the moment the teacher turned her head, I would try to see what bad words were in there.  I am lucky to have a group of kids that are so much better than I ever was!

On a side note, Shea really misses Jeff. I am really looking forward to Friday, but poor Shea has a while longer to wait.