What I Learned Today

Every student is a unique and special flower. My central objective as a substitute teacher should be to facilitate the flourishing of each flower as much as I am capable. All students should be given the space to spread their petals and soak up the greatest amount of sunshine possible. Whenever I may try to discipline them, I should never ever use a stern tone, candidly identify the ways they are misbehaving, or physically infringe upon their personal space. Engaging in such activities accomplishes nothing of worth. It only casts a dark cloud of negativity over a precious plant and robs it of vital sunlight.

Never again will I allow my own sense of self-respect to interfere with my duty of being a good gardener. No matter how many thorns or nettles a flower may boast, it is not my place to judge the flower, let alone to prune its harmful features. Time outs are not punishments, but rather designated times for students to better take command of their own development. Being sent to the office is not to be presented to the student as something negative, but as a positive opportunity to refocus the trajectory of one's flourishing. As a gardener, I am not there to impose my own values of propriety on the children. I am only their to serve each flower's self-driven growth.

Today I spent my first 2 hours of a roaming assignment with some 5th graders. Unfortunately, I had to fill out two Level 2 forms before 10am. One student refused to leave the classroom to serve his time out so I had to call the office to have him removed. The other student, a girl, spoke disrespectfully to me the entire time I was filling out her form and then told me she didn't care if she got in trouble or not. So I gave her a Level 3 immediately and sent her to the office instead of another classroom. I could just have easily filled out forms for at least 3 other students in the class for similar behavior, except for at some point during my stay in that room I actually needed to discuss something resembling academic material.

30 minutes later, I'm the one being talked to by the assistant principal. The two paragraphs of italicized horseshit above expresses the subtext I identified in what this man said to me. Apparently when a kid runs across the classroom and then disrupts the other students by refusing to sit at his desk and work, it is wrong of me to put my face 4 inches from his and tell him his behavior is unacceptable. And after his classmate spends the better part of the morning talking down to me as if I'm nothing, it is wrong of me to tell her that, "It's not part of my job to be publicly disrespected by some punk kid." I was told the student "internalized" my comment and cried upon arriving at the office. Which strikes me as funny (the peculiar "funny") because she was still bragging that she didn't care about what I thought as she walked out the door with her Level 3 form in hand. Mr. Assistant Principal showed me today that when the kids piss in your face, the only appropriate response is to take it without complaining. When the adversarial disposition of his precious flowers created a situation of "students vs. the sub," he took their side.

This is the third time in three weeks I've felt the administrators of the schools I work in have hung me out to dry in a difficult situation. And as my last couple of posts have shown, this state of affairs is taking all the fun out of my job...and my blog. Recently I've been feeling as uncertain about my future as I have in about 15 years, and now my present is becoming an increasingly unpleasant situation. Even my jovial nature is finding it hard to identify something to laugh at in all of this.


...but I'm sure I will quite soon. Like Beyonce, I too am a survivor.