"Roasting" - Have you heard about "roasting?" In third grade parlance, this turns out to be something said that is unkind, perhaps teasing or a mean comment, toward another person. Those standing around then say, "Oooo, you're roasted!" This is clearly not in keeping with the first Keppel Be: Be Respectful, and some students in our class have been feeling sad and angry when someone has roasted them.
We went outside after lunch today for a class meeting in the shade. I shared with students the tradition of a Roast as a way to honor someone important, and that the jokes and teasing were meant to be in fun, but most students had a hard time with the idea that this would be a way to show how much you admire someone.
Everyone who wanted to share something had the chance, and some of the comments included:
- The person who says the roasting gets a lot of attention, especially when everyone around says, "Ooooo."
- The person who says the roasting can become more popular, and the person getting roasted can become less popular.
- The person getting roasted can feel bad because it doesn't seem funny to them, it just seems mean.
- The person getting roasted by a friend might not want to be friends with that person anymore.
As we all started to think about "roasting" from the point of view of the person being roasted, it didn't take long for kids to bring up that this was not respectful of the other person, even if it did seem funny at first. Most said that they didn't like being roasted themselves, so roasting doesn't fit with our Room 1321 Constitution where we state that "We pledge to treat others the way we want to be treated." In the end, we unanimously agreed that "roasting" is now prohibited for Room 1321.
Then we decided that we could find another way to use our senses of humor, and so we are going to start collecting jokes, sharing them in class, and compiling a Room 1321 Book of Jokes!