Gimme a Later Curfew... Or Else!

Those nearest and dearest to me know how much I’ve struggled with my third period class this year. They are all nice kids individually, and I have good relationships with most of them—and with the parents of the rest. Marina loves to read, Alejandro, TJ, Sam and Abdul all play on the football team together, Carlos’s girlfriend is pregnant with their second child, Kora is a refugee from Burma, Lisa is involved in church activities every single day after school. But together as a class, they truly are a pack of little monsters. A typical day with this class involves involves DJ wandering aimlessly around the room throughout my lesson, Bobby alternately yelling, whispering, or gesturing at his friends while staring at me defiantly, Kevin slumped asleep on his desk (he gets really grumpy when I wake him up every day), Tyson doing his very best to ignore me, and general mayhem and chattiness from the rest of the class.

We are currently working on writing editorials in this class. Today, I gave a mini-lecture with a powerpoint presentation on Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals: pathos, logos, and ethos. I asked students to come up with three arguments (one using each type of rhetorical appeal) to convince their parents to make their curfew later. Things started out fine with logos (arguing through the use of logic, reasoning, or facts). “You should let me stay out later because I’m a responsible student; I get good grades, thus I’ll also be responsible when I’m out at night.” We took a turn for the worse, though, with Sarah’s suggestion, “You should let me go so I don’t have to sneak out.” I told her that sounded more like blackmail than reasoning to me.

Things deteriorated further as we began discussing how to appeal to their parents’ emotions (arguing using pathos). Students came up with such persuasive techniques as crying, yelling, and staying locked in their rooms until their parents met their demands. I kept reminding them of our definition of rhetoric—persuasive LANGUAGE, not a dramatic display. The worst was, “A good persuasive technique would be to cry and shout at them till you get your way! It works. I do it till my parents give in.” I am a little horrified.

Finally, we reached ethos (citing a credible authority). Irene suggested telling the parents, “My teacher says I need to do my homework, so I have to go work on a project at a friend’s house,” in order to weasel her way into a later curfew. Again, I tried to redirect our course back towards argument using persuasive language. The point is to convince your parents to agree to let you stay out later, not to trick them into it.

At the end of all of this, Bobby pipes up with a question, and it just makes me grin: “Do you have kids, Ms. Sterling?” Thank god I don’t. And thank god I taught this lesson; I can now appreciate how WELL my students are behaving around me, as compared to what they apparently serve to their parents! I’m so happy to meet them in the classroom and not at the dinner table.