Wakey,Wakey, Hands off Snakey--or, An English Teacher's Nightmare

Part of my responsibilities as an English teacher include teaching students how to write personal narratives. This can be a daunting task, as so many students come into my class vocalizing how much they detest writing. The loathe writing. The would rather be hung and quartered than write.

So, before I can even start teaching the writing part of writing, I spend time getting students to feel comfortable so they want to write and are willing to write.

This includes doing a host of exercises that allow them to think back over their lives, and choose people, places, or incidents that are important to them. After generating such lists, students are then promoted to choose something from the many lists to write about.

I do not read the lists. They're private. They are student's most intimate experiences. Plus, I most likely wouldn't understand them anyway.

Fast forward past the prewriting, brainstorming and drafting. While students re working, I try my best to conference with as many as possible. On a good day--and I mean a very good day--I may get to conference with three students per hour.

As such, many are left out and do not conference with me until they are well in to the draft or revision process.

Please keep all that in mind.

Yesterday, one of my students, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, bounded up to me with a typed (gasp!) personal narrative in hand. He proclaimed that he had worked very hard on his paper, and that his dad had helped him with it, and that he wanted to turn it in. *Please note--his dad helped him with his paper.

I had not yet conferenced with this student. As such, I asked him to read his narrative aloud to me so we could continue to revise it together.

He starts reading. The narrative starts off as most thirteen-year old narratives do--boring. It appears to be about a family trip to LA. He, his mom, his dad and his sister are sharing a hotel room.

Then the action starts. His dad catches his younger brother jacking off in the bed.

Yes, dear reader, you heard me right. I'm listening to a thirteen-year-old boy read his personal narrative about his dad catching his brother jacking off.

The catch phrase is "Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey," which, evidently is what his dad said to his brother.

What. The. Fuck.

For those of you who are not teachers, this is what we deal with. Your children are writing personal narratives about masturbating and then reading them to their English teachers.

Anyone with any suggestion on how I should move forward, please post.