This year I have a little clique of students who banter through the entire class period. "Your mom" this, "That's what she said" as a response to various statements, "I'll float your <div>", and so on. And of course getting yelled at (or glared at) by me for various profanities, degenerating into things that sound like profanities, ("thuck", for example).
Finally it was affecting some other students' abilities to work. So how to stop the verbal pollution? I can't dock them points ("so go ahead, flunk me"...these kids, mostly, are not ones who care about grades or in some cases even about passing). I can't send them to the office (our administrators are overloaded already, and often not in the office or even in the building). Therefore, I requested that they vent in non-verbal ways. Vent in the waitlist (a web app I wrote last year that students use to record that they need help, when it gets really busy). Vent to each other by e-mail. And I did say that I would not penalize them for any of this as long as it was written, not spoken. Yes. I. Did.
Result: as students hand in work, (very good work, actually), it comes in e-mails with subjects such as "HOLY SHIT my personal page is a SEXY BEAST!" That's the tamest one, the only one I feel I can print in this blog. And the stuff that's rolling through the waitlist? Suffice to say that I'm getting a good education in today's teenage profanity and slang. Yowza. This is not what I remember from when I was in high school.