Foul Mouthed Cursers

There seems to be a glitch in my switch to middle school, and the principal mentioned it in our first staff meeting. He told the true story of a teacher observation he had to do, and he did as usual and walked into the classroom without fanfare so as not to disrupt the lesson. He quietly sat down at a table with a boy we shall call Alex. Alex was legally blind, although he had some vision, and our principal said he probably knew he had sat down by Alex without drawing any attention to himself.

The teacher had a student at the chalkboard working on a math problem. The student cracked a joke, the teacher cracked a funny comment, and everybody started laughing. Then the student said something really funny, and everyone laughed hard, including the principal. Being a good-sized grown man his laugh was probably louder than everyone else's, so Alex must've heard him, and when the laughing died down whispered, "Shut up, you fv(k1ng @$$h0!e."

The principal was shocked, and said he couldn't believe what he had heard, so he quietly asked, "Excuse me? What did you say?"

Alex whispered back, "You heard me you fv(k1ng @$$ho!e. Shut up."

The principal knew he had heard it correctly, so he told the boy to follow him out into the hallway. When they got there, the principal asked, "Do you know who I am? This is the principal, Mr. Mack."

Alex's jaw dropped, and he started to apologize profusely. The principal reported that many times Alex offered up the grand excuse that he thought he was talking to a fellow student; he had been tricked and made a mistake. After many attempts to appease the principal, he was brought to the office and put on an out-of-school suspension.

The principal then explained that no cursing or disrespectful language will be tolerated. He knew how he had felt being talked to like that, and it didn't matter who Alex thought he was talking to or not; such language will not be tolerated. A teacher's job is to stay calm when such language occurs.

I don't think getting angry at student cursing is going to be a problem for me because I am usually humored or shocked rather than angered, and if it's done properly, cursing can actually be quite an effective language tool. I'm just not going to be able to forgive and forget; cursing is cause for a suspension.

I asked everyone later if I was going to be cursed at, and the general reply I received was, "Well, duh!"

But what about "dadburn it" and "frickin' "? And what about "pooty-putt" and "crippity crud"? I use those.