Rough Week

Maybe if I had kept a diary from my first year of teaching, I would feel a bit better right now. My anger and frustration would be refocused through a slightly more positive lens. Some thoughts that would run through my head would be:

At least not that many kids are walking all around the room.
At least they shut up when they read.
At least they are learning more from me.

But instead, I think about how Kaeleen doesn't shut the hell up and wanders around to the other side of the room where I've now seated her friends because they can't shut up either. I think about how Yulianni called me a "dum-dum" and then told me to get my face out of her face and go somewhere else. I think about how I cried on Thursday and when I went back into my classroom, kids asked me with smiles in their eyes if I was crying. Vicious, nasty sons of bitches. I hate them so much right now. Their meanness is eating away at me.

I don't get it. Even last year, when I was both a shitty at teaching and bad at management...I never had kids cuss at me. They didn't tell me to "get the fuck outta here" when I take away the cell phones and iPods they're not supposed to have. They didn't tell me to screw myself when I asked them to sit in their chairs.

I don't get how the school can let them get away with stuff like this and then blame everything on the teacher not being able to manage their classes. Well, there are 5th year teachers, 7th year teachers, and other even more seasoned folks who have trouble. Doesn't that say something about administration's lack of discipline implementation? Yes, a lot of things are within the teacher's control. But when a kid doesn't get suspended for spitting in another kid's face, or when a kid can get away with walking out of the classroom almost every day...then at that point, who's the one to blame?

How my principal can sit on her ass all day in her sad metaphor of a throne is beyond me. She never comes into classrooms to see how her teachers and students are doing. All she knows how to do is buy new clothes, and mix and match with poor taste. She cares more about "fashion" than student achievement. It's amazing. She's such a fucking joke. There is absolutely no professional development in this school and I'm so done with it!

Last Thursday, when I got really emotional and walked out of my class, one of my former students saw me and followed me into an empty classroom where I cried. I started ranting to her about how fucked up the school was and how I praise God that she's getting out of there and going to a high school. I told her that she needs to do well and value her education if she's ever going to get anywhere in her life because I'll be damned if I see her end up in a bad place in life because of the bad choices she was taught to make. I'm actually kind of close to her and I know she wouldn't divulge the information I told her so...whatever...