Cultural Spelling Rears its Ugly Head

So every Friday in my class we have a spelling test. It's not a normal I say the word, you write the word spelling test. We do dictation sentences (which I send home at the beginning of the week for them to practice all week, so it's not new to them). I say all that to say that Friday is not my students first exposure to any of these words. All of them are somewhat familiar. Got that?

As I call out the sentences and the words, I walk around the room to make sure the kids are on the right line and that they are somewhat going in the right direction. I am walking around, pretty proud of them because for ONCE I feel like they seem to be getting these words (Praise the Risen Lamb). Then I get to my good friends seat. We will call her "Dylan." We will call her "Dylan" because earlier in the week when we were writing our name on the back of some cute elves we made, she wrote "Dylan" all over the back of hers. Her name is not "Dylan" and is not even close to being "Dylan." It doesn't even start with a D. She just does things for the sheer joy of causing me to raise my voice. Sometimes I think because she knows I'm going to just look at her with my mouth ajar, shaking my head in utter confusion.

Anyway, so I get to "Dylan's" seat and the sentence I asked them to write was "We are here." Easy, simple sentence. I go one word at a time to make sure they get it. I get to good old "Dylan's" table and I see she has written the first word, which should be "We" but instead of writing the correct, English language spelling of the word "we" she has decided to write it the cool, 21st century way and spell it "Wii." She knew what she was doing. She knows how to spell "We." In no way was she confused and thought that I meant the awesome video game system that I secretly want.

I looked at her, with my head cocked to one side and said, "Um, 'Dylan,' Miss Shrop doesn't mean THAT kind of 'we.' " The whole class then starts to yell out, "What kind of 'we' did she write?" "Did she write like a 'Wii?!' " "I have a Wii, Miss Shrop!" "Santa said he's bringing ME one!" Mind you, this is all during the middle of a test. She just grins a mischeovous grin and looks at me with this sly look like, "Ah piss, I've been caught," and erases it to write the correct spelling. However, I shouldn't be surprised. This is the same kid who, at lunch last week, was pretending to be Kung Fu Panda and practicing "dominating" everyone with just a single flick of her pinky. Ay Dios Mios.