The Limits of Compassion
Once, while I was being observed by my principal, I had a student leap from his seat and head to the middle of the room, shouting, "Which way is Mecca? Which way is East?" He then dramatically bowed down, arms out and everything, and ululated prayers to Allah. He was not Muslim. But he was having a full-on manic episode. I've had other students throw desks, students try to break out of school through the window, students throw Gatorade bottles at their ex-girlfriends who happened to be walking by the door...only for it to hit me instead. I've been told to fuck off once, told "I don't care," dozens, and flagrantly disobeyed more times than I'll ever be able to count. I had a student try to give a presentation on google slides wherein he had placed a nude photo of his girlfriend as the background, and once I even had to ask a kid to stop masturbating in class ("Put your hands on the desk where I can see them. And now go to the bathroom." "Why?" "Masturbation is a private behavior." "Why?"...etc.)
And yet, of course I've never held these behaviors against a kid. I can't. I'm their teacher, and it's my job to understand them. I know they've got shit to learn, and they've been through shit which makes acting certain ways more likely. I believe the "been through shit" category of my students' experiences can be labeled "suffering." And I think good teachers must be called upon to understand this suffering, in its full Buddhist sense, in order to have compassion for their students as human beings.
But what are the limits of compassion? I'm sure a real Buddhist or a real Christ would say: there are none. But I invite Christ or Buddha to come on down to my place of employment.
So today, I'm standing in the parking lot, enjoying an apple on a ten-minute break after 6 straight hours of P.D. I've been stood up by my new co-teacher now 3 times in a row--she says she'll meet me some place and then never shows. I've just witnessed a full-on battle for top-dog in a curriculum meeting, in which three women are shouting at each other about late-homework policies. Mud was slung, tattling to the assistant principal was threatened, voices were raised. Everyone was stating a variation on the same point, but kept repeating their point louder and more angrily in an attempt to see which weakling would concede her argument first.
About 40 minutes after the fight, a co-worker approaches me during group-work time, and says, "You know, my father passed this summer," and began to audibly cry in the largest room in our school building, with all staff members present. I listen and attempt to comfort her, feeling the eyes of a good dozen staff members watch this interaction, a classic from a classically histrionic co-worker.
So back outside, I'm leaning against my car and soaking up a little sun, blissfully alone. No sooner do I begin to feel the peace come dropping slow that one of my school's famous clowns approaches me, wanting to chat. I'm not thrilled, but can't find a way to politely avoid the interaction. She begins to tell me that she has a much better schedule this year now that she's no longer "stuck teaching co-taught courses" (co-taught classes are ones that contain a high percentage of students with disabilities). "I'm teaching honors," she told me, "And I deserve it. I have higher quality kids this year, and it's just gonna be a great year." My face must have flashed with some of my internal horror, because she quickly rebounded from that statement, saying, "I mean, I'm so grateful for our co-teaching assistants. I mean, the assistants are just great." YOU WOULD THINK I AM MAKING THIS UP, and yet I am not! At this point, I believe I laugh. I laugh a sort-of stupefied guffaw normally reserved for a particularly absurd explosion in a Michael Bay movie--shit is just way over the top. This woman, who has been mentioned before in the annals of ignorance chronicled on my little blog (livejournal? lolz) for referring to her Chinese exchange student as "so weird", had managed to insult both kids with disabilities (they aren't "higher quality," which means they must be "lower quality") and those with college degrees who teach them (we are teachers, not assistants) in one magnificent fell-swoop, with such breath-taking ignorance that her views would have not been out of place at some 1920s hearing on the "Feebleminded Menace" and their assistants. I can't move on. I can't forgive. I can not find the compassion or the love. Instead, I find some sympathetic co-workers and we laugh, uproariously, about being called assistants. I know adults have been through some shit. But I am truly grappling with how there seem to be so many adults around who have no business being around kids, as they are fucking crazy, irresponsible, and disrespectful to people who they perceive as peers. Some people would say I'm venting. But I think, on top of that, I am having an existential crisis. Why are people so miserable and shitty? Or am I the miserable one for focusing on their idiocy? How do I let it go? How do I address it? How do I have compassion for the real imbeciles? TO BE CONTINUED














