The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
I did not know that I was looking, but I have found it. I have discovered what the literal most embarrassing situation imaginable is.
It is when you are a thirteen-year-old girl and your mother, with your father also in the room, describes your recent bout with vaginal itching to your male principal.
There is no way to be more embarrassed than when that happens. It is impossible.
Today was exhausting. We had a snow day yesterday for what turned out to be damn near no reason at all, and I kinda needed yesterday, as this is one of my Busy Weeks, so today was even more nuts than usual, especially since the AP began my day by handing me a stack of referrals from the last hour of Wednesday and asking me to deal with them.
For reasons that I can’t get into, I had to call a couple of seventh grade girls out of class and into my office toward the end of the day today. I picked them from a list of kids I could have chosen because I know both of them fairly well, relatively speaking, and because as near as I’ve been able to tell they’re both relatively smart and honest kids. They both happened to be in the same class and so came down together.
They walk into my office and one of them asks if they can shut the door. “I don’t want to talk about this with the door open,” she says.
I raise an eyebrow. There is literally no way that she can have any idea what I want to talk to them about. It’s flatly impossible.
“You two are in so much trouble,” I say. I am doing this to fuck with them. They’re not in the tiniest shred of trouble, but I know they’re both good kids and they’re going to temporarily freak out if I tell them I’m mad at them.
And they don’t react.
Um.
“So, uh, why do you think I called you down here?”
“The Ellie Mae thing,” one of them says. Now, I don’t know who Ellie Mae is, and that’s not her name, but it’s close enough in a way that entertains me.
I look at the other one. “You’re both involved in this, right?” She nods.
Note that I didn’t even know they were friends. This is hilarious.
“Tell me your side of the story,” I say.
Two minutes later, having been led through a dizzying shitstorm of names and social media accounts and a web of cousins and aunts and uncles so thick that I halfway want to start drawing a map, I halt the conversation and tell them why they’re actually down in my office. “We will deal with this other thing afterwards,” I say, parts of my brain screaming at other parts of my brain to run. Because this has every sign of a Sally told Sherry that Susie told Sammie that Sharon saw Shayna say to Shalynn that Sally’s sister’s boyfriend’s third cousin was a slut, and I want nothing to do with it.
But, because I am a rockstar, I sort everything out and issue instructions for what is to be done on Monday. Only problem is that what was supposed to be a five-minute conversation ended up taking 25.
But I love it when they accidentally rat themselves out like this.
I confiscated this little gem from one of my girls today. It’s behind a jump because it’s crazily, hilariously NSFW; you want to click through, though, trust me:
Man, I can’t even imagine what kind of crazy shit it must have brought on ten thousand years ago to look up in the sky and see this happening:
I’ve eliminated one possible reason for The Surge: it hit me this afternoon (in the midst of teaching an algebra lesson and, to wit, being observed in same by my assistant principal) that it was possible that I was in the midst of a wave of spammery. Not the case; Akismet has only caught a handful of spam comments in the last couple of days. At any rate, it’s not quite 4:30 and I’m about to catch yesterday’s traffic. I already have more uniques than I’ve ever had in a single day, for the second day in a row. Still no clue where everyone’s coming from.
Anyway. Let’s tell a DC story; I teased this with a sentence earlier but I figure you maybe deserve the entire story. One of the problems with my career is that I am occasionally forced to act as somewhat less than a decent person because I am a teacher. (At this point I spend twenty minutes digging through my archives to look for a post about a couple of kids finding me at a gas station and demanding a ride home; I can’t find it.) (EDIT: Aha!)
This is one of those stories.
For the first time, the hotel we stayed at on the DC trip had a pool, and a pool with reasonably late hours so that the kids stood a good chance of being able to swim both nights we were staying there. They had a couple of hours during the first night, as a matter of fact. The chaperones just went downstairs and chilled next to the pool while the kids splashed and threw each other around, occasionally reprimanding stupid behavior (true, hilarious fact: after one transgression, one of my chaperones– who is our gym teacher– actually made one of the kids get out of the pool and do push-ups.) but mostly just watching. By the time the pool closed most of them (and the chaperones) had gone back to their rooms and it was just down to me and a couple of kids. Now, the hotel has a rule– which they had been informed of– that denizens of the pool need to be wearing shirts while wandering around in the hotel. One of my girls, while getting out of the pool, discovered that one of her roommates had absconded with both a) her shirt and b) her room key. Neither of these are really big problems, mind you; I had her drape her towel over her shoulders (large towel, slim girl; no biggie) and I had extra copies of all the keys in my room.
We knocked on their door first; nobody home. Well, fine, I’ll go get my key and let you in. I turned and left, not really expecting her to follow me; I didn’t even actually notice she’d tagged along until I had my room unlocked and was halfway in. At which point it hit me that the hotel hallway camera was about to record my ass taking a half-naked soaking wet fourteen-year-old girl into my hotel room.
I’m still not sure whether making her stay in the hallway counts as an etiquette breach– I suspect it was a bit of an asshole move– but… yeah. No, we’re not letting that video get taken, even just for a few seconds, even if leaving you in the hallway to drip while I go inside and figure out where I tossed the envelope full of room keys seems kinda rude. And thus the sentence, which, delightfully, cracked her up once I said it. And then the keys were located and she was let into her room and all was well again.
(Had a similar moment on the way home where several kids tried to get me to add them as friends on Snapchat. Uh, guys? Snapchat is for sending nekkid selfies. Ain’t no damn way I’m adding you on no Snapchat. Sorry.)
Ah, teaching.
In one sentence.
“I would like not to have a teenage girl in a wet bikini in my hotel room right now, please.”
My son is apparently reading a book called “The Alphabet for Hippies;” so far I’ve heard him mention that R is for radicchio and K is for kohlrabi; I feel like he should not know what these things are. I barely know what these things are, to tell you the truth. S is apparently for Swiss chard.
C is for cookie, dammit, not “currant.” I rebel against the tyranny of the good-food alphabet!
Anyway.
Featured events for today: One of the two Kids who are Always Suspended came back from suspension today; the other was himself suspended by the end of the day. At the moment I don’t know what for. Another kid has just been put on half-days due to behavior issues and has also been suspended for the last several days; he managed to last literally less than five minutes before getting sent out of the room and then home. That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Here was his school day: 1) came to school; 2) ate lunch; 3) four minutes of class; 4) sent home.
Also, I intercepted a note from one student to another that turned out to be a rather detailed and surprisingly well-written and romantic description of her first kiss. The girl flipped out in a fashion that was probably supposed to be dramatic but just ended up hilarious; when I stopped laughing I assured her that I didn’t give a good goddamn who she was kissing and gave her the story back. There are certain situations when we find out about stuff that they’re doing where we become mandatory reporters; a two-second kiss is not one of them.
At some point I actually did do some teaching today, too. This has actually been a pretty good week (the absences of both of the Always Suspended twins for the first two days of the week helped) and I’m hoping tomorrow keeps the trend going. Especially since the other possibility is that the week has been saving all of its bullshit for Friday. I’d prefer that to not be the case.
(He’s still reading that book. What the hell is a Xigua?)
Tonight’s activities will mostly involve reading, vegetating on the couch, and trying not to die. Forgive me; I can’t be exciting every day.
Have you read yesterday’s post yet? Of course you have! You read everything I write, right? Sure. So you know all about the sexual harassment issues that blew up my third and fourth hour and then ate most of my prep.
Remember the bit at the beginning, the bit that I almost deleted on account of it was the Same Rant All Over Again and wasn’t entirely connected with the rest of the post? The bit about how bullying is a Huge Fucking Deal until the very second the kids are best friends again and then oh, wait, we were filing formal complaints on each other? Never mind.
Yeah, keep that shit in mind.
Today’s highlight involved confiscating a note from the threesome-wanting blowjob-denier in the first story, who threw the whole school into a tizzy and wasted several hours of the time of at least three different staff members by filing a formal complaint of bullying against two other students, one of whom was her ex-boyfriend and the other of whom was his best friend.
The note was passed through the second girl in the first story– the one who everyone was mad at because she supposedly started everything– to the non-ex-boyfriend, to be given to the ex-boyfriend.
Note that I barred the two boys from class today, hoping that a day without them would help to calm things down a bit.
The note was asking the ex-boyfriend to please please please take her back so that she didn’t have to give up on true love.
I took it to the counselor.
“I cannot deal with this without using words like idiot and moron, and I probably also cannot deal with this without pointing out in clear language to this young fool that this boy thinks of her as nothing but pussy. It is therefore your problem.”
I have nothing else to say about my day.
Random, before I start: my neighbors have big (thirty feet? I’m bad at estimating distances) columns supporting a portico (or are the columns part of the portico? I’m also bad at architecture) in front of their house. There’s an honest-to-god woodpecker at the top of one of them; I heard the bastard when I got out of my car after getting home this afternoon. He’s wailing whaling (bad at homonyms!) away up there. Is that something I should tell them about?
Anyway. It’s bullying awareness week, or some such bullshit. Or maybe it was last week; I’m not aware enough to be sure. Here is how most people think bullying works: A bunch of children mercilessly pick on one poor bullied student, causing him to be very sad and blah blah blah. Here is how bullying actually works, most of the time: everyone involved is an asshole and a bad actor and everyone involved is doing their best to make everyone else involved miserable as best they can, and the ones who are either the sneakiest or the quickest to file paperwork get to be the “victims” while everyone else gets to be the “bullies.” Oh, and every time the word gets used I have a legally-mandated two days to “do an investigation” and a bunch of complicated paperwork to fill out, only to find out that Suzie told Allie that Shelly said that Sammi said that Sharon said that Allie said that Sheryl was a slut, only it turns out that Shelly didn’t actually say that, Sharon said that Allie said that to Shelly but Suzie is dating Sammi’s ex-boyfriend and Sharon’s mad at her because of it so Suzie actually said that Sammi was a slut because she was defending her on Facebook and today this is a world-ending crisis and the very second I’m done with the paperwork they’ll all be best friends again and oh never mind we worked it out until they hate each other again next week.
If you think I’m exaggerating, you’re not a teacher. I have been doing this job for twelve years and I can count the number of unambiguous instances of clear bullying that I have witnessed on one hand. Everything and I mean everything else has been mostly-mutual teenage bullshit of some kind or another.
That said, one of the events I’m about to describe so far may actually be pretty clear-cut, but I haven’t done my investigation yet.
Keep in mind, by the way, that these are seventh-graders. Thirteen-year-olds.
My third and fourth hour got wrecked because of some vile combination of the following events: 1) One student suggesting to another student that she’d be open to a threesome with her ex-boyfriend and one of his friends; 2) That student reporting to the ex-boyfriend and the buddy that said threesome was a possibility; 3) Upon being asked about the possibility of said threesome via Facebook message (I’ve not seen this message, but other staff members have) the original young lady replied “No… well, maybe… LOL” and then was 4) surprised somehow when the two young gentlemen in question told everyone they knew that this was going to happen. And then during art today there was apparently 5) an attempt to get the threesome bargained down to some oral sex for the non-ex-boyfriend while the ex-boyfriend, apparently, watched. Throw in a different ex-girlfriend of the same dude doing her best to keep her nose in their business and one of the two guys deciding to try to get everyone to ostracize the second girl in the first conversation and you have eaten my entire day, as all four of the principals involved are in my third and fourth hour.
Note that, legally, this isn’t bullying, and I know this because we just had a meeting where we went over the legal definition of bullying in great detail. And also note that none of it took place in school and yet it destroyed not only my entire day but at least two other staff members’ days as well. (And while we’re noting things, note that this still qualifies as sexual harassment and it’s not being ignored.)
I’m leaving the school counselor’s office after spending the first half of my prep period with her and one of my paraprofessionals hashing all this out and making sure we’ve written down everything and notified everybody we need to notify. I’ve done no actual preparing during my prep period. I never do any preparing during prep; that’s Fireman Hour.
I walk to my room, sit down at my desk, and start composing an email. The teacher next door walks into my classroom with another kid in tow– a student who I had in sixth grade two years ago who I just last week had referred to a risk-assessment psychologist on account of she’s cutting herself. The student is being disruptive and making her job impossible and can she stay in my room for a bit? Sure, why not, this email’s gonna take me a few minutes and I’d prefer to have a good excuse to stay in my room if I can have one.
Less than five minutes later, I’m taking her back to the nurse because she’s started shrieking and ranting about how ridiculous it is that anyone thinks they can stop her from hurting herself because it’s her body and she’s gonna hurt herself if she wants to. Well, fuckin’ great, let’s go talk to that psychologist again. I go get the counselor (whose office, remember, I’ve just left) again and that eats another fifteen minutes of the only break (to do everything else I have to do but teach) that I have each day. I have just enough time to run down to my room and get something that I need to have photocopied by the morning; I make it down to the photocopier as the bell is ringing and discover that the photocopier is broken.
Well, great.
Off to the gym, where I make the seventh and eighth graders sit where they’re supposed to and call off buses as they arrive. I spot one of my (7th grade) homeroom girls, normally the sunniest, biggest-smiled kid you’ve ever seen in your life, sitting in the stands, bawling her eyes out.
No goddammit don’t ask this can only cause trouble what are you doing jesus this day is long enough don’t you NO GODDAMMIT YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHY ARE YOU WAVING HER OVER JESUS STOP IT NO NO
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
I consider simply replying “Bullshit” and don’t; there are a few buses gone by now and there are a bunch of other teachers in the gym, so I can pull her into the hallway without officially abandoning what I’m actually supposed to be doing.
We go into the hallway.
“Let’s try that again.”
She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Sobs again.
“Sweetie, there’s absolutely no way I’m letting you get on the bus like this. Tell. Me. What. Happened.”
“(Eighth-grade dumbfuck) won’t leave me alone. He asked me out yesterday and I said no and he just keeps asking and he’s been bugging me about it all day. I can’t get him to stop.” And she starts bawling again.
Which: again, not bullying. But is, again, at least at first blush, a pretty damn clear-cut case of sexual harassment. By some sort of divine providence, the dumbfuck in question is part of the reason that the wrist-cutter earlier got put into my classroom; the two of them were feuding about something too.
I note that he’s already left and ask her if he has her phone number and if she thinks he’ll be calling or texting or Facebooking or anything like that tonight or if he knows where she lives or if she will be quit of him until school starts tomorrow. She confirms that he has no way to get in touch with her and I tell her that we’ll talk about this tomorrow morning. I reflect that she has many older brothers (like, seriously, at least four, plus at least one sister) and consider simply making sure that they have this kid’s address.
I put her on the bus and stop in the counselor’s office on my way out, asking her if she has any room on her lap left, and (as I am mandated to do by law whenever I encounter instances of sexual harassment or bullying) notify her as to the content of the conversation I’ve just had and that I’ll be following up with my official within-two-work-days investigation during homeroom.
At least I know what I’ll be doing during seventh hour tomorrow.
OH WAIT SHIT I FORGOT THIS PART edit: I end the conversation with the counselor early because there is a parent in the office who is screaming at the attendance secretary so loudly that I can hear it halfway down the hallway through two closed doors. As it works out, both the principal and the assistant principal have been out of the building all afternoon at different meetings and so there is really no one in the office who the secretary can refer her to.
“Yeah, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, I’mma go deal with that,” I tell the counselor, and leave her office, attempting to summon my Calm Face. Luckily for (very likely) everyone involved, by the time I got down there another teacher had intervened already and maneuvered the lunatic into the hallway and out of the office. As it turned out he was apparently who she was looking for anyway; I hung around for a minute until I decided he didn’t really need any help (turns out that kids who are angry psychotics tend to have angry psychotic parents; who knew?) and went down to my room to get my stuff, the music of her discontent accompanying me the whole way.
The end.
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