“Edginess” is different now

I grew up in the 2000-2010s (high school class of 2015) when it was super cool to be “edgy”. Most people used racism as a joke. It was still ok to call something “gay” if you didn’t like it. This was always done with friends and never around parents or teachers.

Yesterday, an 8th grade boy did a N*zi Salute during the pledge of allegiance literally right in front of me. I called him out on it and he tried saying he “wasn’t doing nothing”. I sent him to the office.

Later, I was telling friends about what happened and they were saying things like “to be fair, everyone did stupid stuff in middle school”. Which yes, we did. But never in front of teachers.

Also, I feel like now, compared to 2010 when I was in 8th grade, kids are exposed to so much. These kids are on Tik Tok or Instagram reels all day. There is no way they haven’t seen everything going around with Elon Musk and his “Roman Salute” and there is no way they don’t know what they are doing.

So yeah, middle schoolers make bad choices. If a student tells someone to shut the fuck up, I address it in class and move on. When a student displays racist notions, I send them to the office. If they truly don’t know what it means, the principal can explain it.

All this to say… don’t be afraid to call out kids on their shit just because they’re kids. By not doing so, we end up with awful adults and I think we have enough of those already.