This one time, at band camp, I shouted DICK at the top of my lungs. No seriously. It wasn't band camp, it was elementary school, but I once sat in the back of my 'gifted and talented' classroom and yelled the word "DICK" so loud my teacher at the front of the room heard me. What happened was, my elementary school bestie and I had been given bulletin board decoration privileges because we were known for being very artistic. I was excited about the honor. But being that I was sitting next to the bestie, I just had to try to be funny, so as we took our spelling test, and I came across the word dictionary, the gears started to turn. Thinking I was going to get a good chuckle out of her I (thought I) whispered 'hey look. dick!- tionary' but since ya girl can't whisper worth a damn I later came to find I was actually SCREAMING AT THE TOP OF MY LUNGS into her ear and also at the entire class- including Ms. Paduano- who obviously relieved me of my bulletin board duties immediately. I had to go back to my seat. I even tried to lie and say it wasn't me. (Really dumbass?) I felt like a fool the rest of the day but it never came up again. I'm sharing this story for multiple reasons. 1. Even the 'good kids' do ridiculous shit sometimes. Doesn't make them any less intelligent, talented or worth our care and understanding. It makes them human. 2. Notice how my teacher did not berate me for my behavior. That is by far the most outlandish thing I've ever done in my school career and she probably should have come down harder on me which leads me to believe A- she genuinely cared about me B- she knew it was a fluke and wasn't going to allow it to erase what she already knew about me C- she did not feel the need to involve anyone else in the situation Having had the fortune to have a teachers who look like me and teachers from different walks of life see something in me that allowed them to differentiate flukes from failures and manage their classrooms without arresting small children I kind of can't believe the things I'm seeing about the #AssaultAtSpringValley Not only would my teacher never have called the cops on one of us in the first place, but had she felt the need, and then saw a police officer kicking one of our asses, I am 100% positive she would have intervened verbally if not physically to protect us- because she actually LIKED and CARED ABOUT us. Educators want to be respected but if you have been in the presence of people teaching you material that has nothing to do with your daily life in boring and unrelatable ways and throwing you out of class or calling school safety at the first sign of trouble, why the hell would you have any respect for educators, or education as a whole? If you create a situation where students don't feel the need to listen to you and then they don't listen to you, and you come down on them with an iron fist- aren't you part of the problem? That's not to say our kids don't need to listen to reason and follow instructions, but to be quite honest, a lot of the adults our kids are growing up around are not setting an example and therefore do not command respect, so as teachers we are in a position where we have to earn the trust and respect of our students that they may not have for their parents or guardians or for adults in general. Hell, even some kids that come from 'good homes' don't respect authority outside of their parents because other people have not earned their trust. You don't have to agree with it but that doesn't change the reality of the situation. Cops in classrooms are not the answer to ANYTHING and the attacking of children, female children, by grown men at that, should not be acceptable under ANY circumstances. If the logic some of you are using is applied to my situation is 5th grade, the police should have been called, and I could have been justifiably attacked for shouting obscenities during class and talking back to the teacher when she told me to return to my seat. Where would I be now if that's how my situation turned out? Probably not a Graduate of Brooklyn Technical high school in the 3rd year of of her childhood education major at Brooklyn College and working in a daycare and an after school program that serves at risk youth. Because I would have BECOME an at risk youth. I'd be fucking traumatized. You send someone to attack me in class you think I'm going back? You think I trust a teacher or school or COP to have my back after that experience? You think I'm about to sit around and listen to everyone talk about how disrespectful I am and how I need to learn some respect and then, THEN, I'll be SAFE in my own SCHOOL? I can't even explain how unacceptable this all is but I'm so glad I'm one less completely unhinged educator in a system full of people enjoying summers off who really couldn't care less employing a bunch of thugs who also couldn't care less to bully truants and cell phone users. I'm sending all my love to the educators, paras, administrators, super intendants, principals, after school employees, school safety agents, parent coordinators, tutors, coaches, etc. who make a difference and GET IT and deal with young people in a way that keeps their humanity in tact.
