Friday, April 20

Fire Me Now. Please?

I wonder what the repercussions will be for telling my students, "Y'all have treated me like shit since day one, so do you from now on. I don't give a fuck."
A write-up? A pink slip?

I wonder what's going to happen to SB, since he threatened to have me shot. The principal called the police to cover her ass, but because I wouldn't press charges, all the school could do was file for a superintendent's suspension. His moms damn near had a heart attack.

I really like SB. I think he is ridiculously bright and I've asked that he be taken out of my special ed class. He thinks I've given him a hard time since he came to my class. I have. I don't want to watch him fall the way the other new boys did. There are a handful of kids who suffer while I babysit the others. There's only one of me, I can only do so much. The ones that suffer eventually do one of three things: act out so I can babysit them too, become very withdrawn, or do what SB did, finally blow up.
His anger towards me was justified. His threat is another story. Especially since he told me the other day about his friends bringing guns to school. Other teachers felt very comfortable coming up to me and telling me I need to press charges to protect them. If I've made a mistake in my judgment, I've made a mistake. But I'm not about to give another Black boy a record, especially the one Black boy in my class that really has a chance of getting out of the program and on with his life. I think he just let himself go too far today.

I don't know how much more I can take. There's no way I can put all the dysfunctions in writing. They are endless. My friends are speechless. I win every single "who's school is the worst" storytelling contest, hands down. We transfer anger all day long, feed off of it at that middle school. It's never alleviated. There's no mediation. It's really, really twisted.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

:( chin up! that stuff always seems horrifying in the moment, but then you realize that at some point, everyone breaks a little. we have to. we get treated horribly a lot of the time. we are human. we will, at some point, have something to say in return.

unless your principal's a real fuckwad, i would think the most would be a reprimand. this is the first time, right?

sometimes, when i'm having a really bad day, i think i should be rewarded every time i don't sink to the kids' levels. they can be so ridiculous. i have one that got transferred to our school late in the year because something he did at his old placement got him into spotford for a few months. his new thing is asking me if i think i'm "tough." i wanna say, "i don't need to be tough, i have an education and a well-paying job," but i can't. i have to bite my lip and teach him something. i know that they all have potential. but at the end of april, it sometimes just gets really hard to see.

ahnka said...

Hi Joy :) Thanks. My principal is irrational and impulsive. Do I think she'll fire me? No. It's the first time I've said this to them. I told them a whole lot of nasty truths yesterday.

I am just so very tired of this. It's not that I don't have the patience for their behavior. I don't have the patience for the school to come up with an effective method to deal with the bad behavior, which is rampant, it's like a virus. I don't have the patience for uncooperative parents. I don't have the patience for lazyy school safety agents. I don't have the patience for the adults, but I don't even have the time to confront them. So who gets the heat?

The whole explosion began with them trying to intimidate me and me saying "Don't y'all get it? I have nothing to be afriad of, least of all you. I can read. I can write. I can figure out numbers. I'm employed. It's y'all that have everything to be afraid of." They really don't like when I remind them of what they can't do. I guess I'm not supposed to, but they really think they've got it all figured out. I've told them even drug dealers gotta know math.

Anonymous said...

yeah. effective methods. that's a freaking century-long conversation. i have started to forget what effective methods are. and i think if a school doesn't lay down the smack on small things, big things happen. and what school has enough staff to lay down the smack on the small things?

well, some do...and i guess that's where we're looking for new jobs, right?