As one may imagine, when all of my students end up in the room together, conflict can occur. On one such occasion two students were arguing and one tattled on the other. A paraprofessional told the tattler,"There you go tattling and throwing him under the bus..." Immediately, several objects were launched across my room, and my Rubbermaid cart was kicked in and busted. The tattler proclaimed,"I did not throw anyone under the bus this morning! I do not do stuff like that! All I did on the bus was read my book!" Wow.
So what just happened here? My dear student did not destroy my room because he is a bad kid or because he was trying to hurt anyone. He simply was frustrated and confused by this "throwing someone under the bus" business. At this point using the 5-point scale for anger was obviously useless, but after we gave him a few minutes to recover, we explained the statement. Now he thinks this is a very funny thing to say, and he tries to use it himself.
Moments like this, though not always as severe, happen often in my room. These moments are teachable moments for the students and adults alike. We must be reminded that idioms and sarcasm are like a foreign language to our students. Many of them do not have the processing and translating skills needed to make these statements make sense in their current situation.
Using curriculum such as The Hidden Curriculum by Brenda Smith Myles is helpful, but I have found that teaching these through "teachable moments" is most effective. While it may be impossible to teach a student every figurative language statement, it is possible to teach him to realize that when he doesn't understand what a person says that it is ok to ask what they meant in order to avoid frustration, anger, and a possible melt down.
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