Has It Been Three and a Half Months Already?

Finally, my apprenticeship teaching experience is over and I can finally blog again. Hooray! It was a serious doozy. The kids were cute, but they drove me crazy (as kids tend to do), and several of the teachers with whom I interacted were truly unpleasant. At times, they were downright hateful.

One of the teachers, who was actually an effective teacher and classroom manager, was a classhole, a word I just made up which means "classist asshole." Every time she came into the classroom for a team meeting or for lunch, she would ask who sat in a seat. If the child lived in the trailer park, she'd go, "Ew" and move to the seat of a student she deemed acceptable. On another occasion, she came into the classroom (thankfully while the children were out of the room in one of their special classes) and made fun of the size of the head of one of my students. Less than a week before that, I ripped a third grader a new one for making fun of the same girl because of her looks. I can't even tell you what that third grader looks like, because he was hanging his head in shame the entire time I scolded him. Needless to say, I don't think he'll be making fun of any kids any time soon, at least not in the hallway next to the faculty bathroom. I just think it's amazing how a grown woman with children who is an experienced teacher could be so cruel. I wish I were in a position where I could tell her the same thing I told that third grader.

The worst part of both of these people making fun of this girl is that I'm pretty sure this girl is developmentally delayed. I wouldn't expect a third grader to know some of the physical and emotional signs of an uncategorized developmental delay, but a teacher should. This poor girl reminded me a lot of the mothers at my job whose children were taken away from them, because they will never be developmentally capable of taking care of kids. They are women who are mentally around the age of 10 and were either taken advantage of by jerky men or had kids with guys who were just as developmentally delayed or mentally ill. I have a strong feeling that her delays will become more apparent as she gets older. Of course, teachers shouldn't make fun of kids anyway, whether it's in front of the kid or behind the kid's back. But to talk like that about a kid who is most likely developmentally delayed, that's just plain wrong. I suppose she could be called an ablebitch, a word I just made up which means "ableist bitch." I usually object to that word, but not this time.

Anywho, now that I'm done with student teaching, I should be updating much more frequently. There were a couple of things that I missed that I would like to post about over the next couple days or so. I'm happy to get back into blogging after this long hiatus. Whoo-hoo!