Too Jaded? Or Not Jaded Enough……
I just don’t know where to start this entry. If you were to see me right now, I imagine I’d remind you of some variety of beached fish. My mouth keeps flopping open, then I shut it and it flops open again…. But I am not gasping for air, I am desperately seeking words to adequately describe how I feel right about now.
One of the things the students here do at the end of the year is bring in old t-shirts which they have all their friends sign. Sort of like a wearable year book. Some of you guys may have done something similar, right? (Telling on myself: My Senior Year in High School….I dyed my sky blue polyester uniform dress a lovely light plum shade….and brought markers to school so that my friends could sign my uniform. Silly Nuns had no fashion sense and sent me home. Right – like those black and white penguin outfits were better looking than my lovely plum uniform??)
During my third block today I noticed one of the girls wearing her year book shirt. On the back was written what looked remarkably like TRUCK YOU (only insert an F for the T in truck). I asked her if she knew what was on her shirt. She was puzzled. I had her take it off and we looked at it together. Yep. Definately TRUCK YOU (only insert an F for the T in truck). The girl was genuinely surprised and a bit upset. This is not the sort of comment she had imagined on her wearable year book.
The child who had written this is one of our "special ed" students. He is also one of my students. I took the shirt and went in search of his teacher. I showed her what he had written and she was a bit surprised and a bit annoyed with him. As we were discussing what to do – lo and behold his momma came into the office to check him out of school early. So we showed Momma.
At first Momma was not phased at all. Then I had a spanish speaker explain what the words TRUCK YOU (only insert and F for the T in truck) mean. That did it for Momma. Momma was mad. We were glad to see that Momma was upset because that meant that she would talk to her son sternly and discipline him. Parents of our students often don’t care enough to get angry with their children.
The boy came into the office and Momma fussed at him. There were tears in her eyes. She was really upset! It seems that today is her birthday and she was checking him out of school early to celebrate with her. And now he had written those awful words on a shirt. Spoiled her whole birthday. She said she felt like hitting him.
We all commiserated with Momma. After all – we’re all teachers and most of us are parents. We KNOW how frustrated our studunts/kids can make us. We were feeling sorry for momma.
AND THEN MOMMA COMMENCED TO BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF HER SON. Right there in the office. In front of 5 teachers, the office personnel and 8-10 students. I gaped….then looked around for an administrator to help. Momma shoved the boy out the front door of the office as I ran out the back door and got an admnistrator.
(By the way – kudos to the Asst. Principal who responded. I said "AP-need you out front now!" and he RAN. He never stopped to question me. He never asked why – he just went. I am so grateful. Now I know that he can be counted on in an emergency. Sadly, not all administrators can).
To shorten the story – Between the nurse a guidance counsellor, an AP, and two teachers – Momma calmed down long enough to regain control of herself.
On the other hand – I totally lost control. I went out to my car, got in and drove off campus. (Yes, it was lunch time so I didn’t leave a class wondering where their teacher was). And I cried. That child did not deserve a beating for what he did – and certainly not a public beating! I felt so bad. Had I know that Momma would react this way, I would have done something entirely different. What he did was inappropriate. It was NOT a major life-threatening, earth shattering matter. It deserved a reprimand or some sterner consequence du jour…….but a public beating?
I talked to other teachers that witnessed it. They were remarkably unmoved. They joked about it. One of them even asked me "Oh. Was this your first time?" MY FIRST TIME? First time seeing a student beaten in front of me? Oh yeah. It most definately was my first time. I hope to high heaven that it is also my LAST time. Have they seen this so often that they have become desensitized and it no longer horrifies them? Or were they never horrified to begin with? Am I oversensitive? One of those darn interfering bleeding-heart liberals?
I don’t know. But I do know that I will be very careful about what I say and how I talk to parents in the future. I know it wasn’t my fault….but if I had KNOWN that Momma was that volatile I would have handled this differently. Oh dear. What is wrong with people? What is wrong?
My reaction would have been identical to your own. If that is being over-sensitive, I would choose it a thousand times over those who actually had the audacity to joke about the situation. How terrible. You couldn’t have known. *sends you many hugs*
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wow. just wow.
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That is why I try to keep any issues at school. You had no idea she was going to react how she did…
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What ever happened to “Spare the rod, spoil the child”? It worked for thousands of years. The new ways for disciplining kids don’t seem to b working nearly as well as that old one did. I’m thankful for learning morality to the tune of a switch my dad used on me. Can still hear his words: “Son, this hurts me more than it does you”
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I wonder how the mother would have reacted if she had not been in the presence of all those people. Was she reacting so strongly because of her own embarrassment as well as the fact that he’d upset her on her birthday, I wonder, rather than because of the boy’s behaviour? I feel sorry for both mother and son. No doubt she will feel embarrassed again at remembering how she lost control of herself.
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ryn: If it was only that easy! I am so behind in reading OD I’ll never catch up. Sorry you had such an incident over the tee shirts.
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The more I find out about other parents the more I appreciate my own.
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I would have cried too & felt the same touch of guilt, but how could you have known the mother would react that way? If any good can come out of this, I hope it’s that mom will get some help in dealing with her anger. I’m not against disciplining a child whose behaviour should be punished, but beating the crap out of your kid is not punishment & doing so in front of an audience is sickening.
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I’m so sorry, man that hurts. Hurts bad. And yes, it happens all the time, so of course he wrote that on someone’s shirt. So much is inherited, passed on and then on. There is always a reason someone writes hostile terms, too many reasons. This gets reported to Child Protection doesn’t it?
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you feel the right way for you to feel……. i’m hoping the young boy is physically okay, i’m thankful you got the beating stopped. i feel badly for the young boy’s mom too. something has made her the way she is. it’s NOT acceptable, but i bet she didn’t pick being the way she is. *hugs*
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i had to go chew on a radisch, then make some dip and eat some more crunchy veggies. i think the letting kids run the house thing is wrong, but a ‘beating’ is beyond a right of a human to inflict on another human. too many of my students have no respect for others, but most of the parents had better self control. unfortunately even in church school there are some who stike out in anger
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As you said, hon. What he did was wrong, but no way did he deserve that. I am not anti-punishment, but not in public and certainly not to extremes like this! Hugz
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There is so much wrong everywhere today, I don’t know where to start. Part of it is cultural, part of it is endless frustration, part of it is that we don’t give teachers any authority anymore, just responsibility, part of it is poverty and ignorance…Shall I go on? With a big hug…
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I don’t even know what to say, except to echo your last rhetorical question: What IS wrong with people??????????????
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Wow, I’m with you. Momma should have gotten her come uppence too.
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Big, big hugs. Being compassionate is not being oversensitive. The mother’s behavior was completely inappropriate. Even looking at the capital punishment angle, I gather from Willy’s note that his father was in control of his behavior, and demonstrated some remorse that punishment had to be inflicted. The mother seems not to have shown that at all, just gone ballistic.
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I’m going to put my 2 cents in here, while the “public beating” wasn’t called for I see every day 40 hours a week kids that need to have their tails tanned a few times. These are kids that have no respect for themselves or others. These are kids whom are left to raise themselves. NEVER in my youth (gawd now I feel old) would I have EVER thought to do half the things these kids do now. cont.
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there is one repete offender child she has 8 or 9 domestic assult charges for beating the crap out of her mother when mom tells her “No”. If this child doesn’t get her way she decides to hit, bite, kick, punch, she has ruptured 3 of her mothers vertabrea(sp). What ever happen to children being respectful, polite, and useing manners. Again I do NOT in anyway condone what this mother did cont..
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but I think we have definatly lost something in our society. It scares me to think these are the kids that are going to be our future. Our Presidents, and congressmen and women and our presidents and ceo’s of companies. I commend you so VERY much for walking into a classroom everyday and trying to make a difference in your own special way. Lael
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RYN: I think I’d prefer having this game on my computer; I am having such a hard time getting used to the controller with all it’s buttons and knobs and I can’t seem to figure out how to reconfigure the favourites buttons to eliminate that damn fart option. It was funny at first, but when your hero starts losing battles because he keeps putting his sword down to fart, it’s not so good. 🙂
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It scares me that we trust our children to teachers like you describe…I think there are too few good ones. Blessedly you are one of them.
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OMG she did NOT! Here you’re so relieved there’s a parent who gives a crap and next thing you know, said parent if completely over the TRUCKING edge. OY VEY ALREADY.
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God I know of parents like this, and WORSE. Some kid in our school used the “n” word in class (not my class), and when the administrator told the father, the father’s punishment was to take the boy to a YMCA, find a big black man and make the boy tell that to his face. However, at another time when the boy said the word “f**got” the father felt it was perfectly all right. Can’t predict parents!
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Thank God the school staff put a stop to the beating. My daughter saw a boy getting beaten by his mother in IHOP. A reastaurant full of customers and employees and no one came to the boy’s rescue.
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