the sensible teacher might say something calm like, “Daniel, put that pencil in the pencil holder and look at me.” But the frustrated teacher is not usually sensible. Watching that pencil sail across the room, and maybe imagining it spiking Lawrenesha in the eyeball or skewering Dante the goldfish, the words flying out of the frustrated teacher’s mouth, more likely, would be something like, “Daniel! I’m going to glue that pencil to your fingers!” Not only would these words fail to describe the correct behavior; they would draw unnecessary attention to the misbehavior. Any student who hadn’t
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