Most of the students in Zero period were great. Aside from one late comer with a big mouth -- Maria, Maria, how did her mother have the stomach to stand her disrespect?
Then there was the plumpy, dumpy Diana. Diana was a handful in that class. A stuffy princess who was taking on a lot of challenges at home and at school, she was an uptight, effete handful, no worse, a bathtub of troubles. So filled with bitterness and hatred toward her immigrant parents, she would vent at me and anyone else with two inches of her desk. A shameful spectacle entirely.
Often she would be doing work from another class in US History, including AP Art History. I simply loathe when students do other classwork in my class. I had a reputation from other schools, where I would take students' work and throw it away on the spot. Sometimes, I felt a little more charitable, I would demand to know which teacher had assigned the infiltrated assignments, then staple them together and send them along.
At Hawthorne, where I had no support, I just had to put up with most of the folly. Diana was the queen of fools, never-ending back-talk, drama that would take up half the period.
I stopped tolerating her nonsense about three weeks into the semester. She was very confrontational, an entitled and trying tyrant, to be sure. Sometimes, she would burst into tears when I told her to put her Art History work away.
Then there was the day that she was ill as well as ill-suited to be in the class. I really pushed her buttons that day.
"Look, Mister, I am having a bad day. Don't push me!"
I just could not resist pushing her. I was tired of her tirades.
"Oh really? Are you having a hard time? Are you have a had day!"
"You are so annoying!" She fired off at me. At that point, I just could not hold back, I was so tired of everything. Tired of the class, tired of the disrespect, tired of putting up with anything less than the respect that a teacher deserves to receive.
I refused to keep putting up with this folly. I sent her to the back of the room, since I could not send her to office -- it was zero period, and there was no support staff on call to assist. Then again, even if the deans and the assistant principals had been there, they would not have helped me, anyway.
The next day, she sat back in the front of the room. That day, she went into outright hysterics. She could not stop herself. I had no patience left.
"Do you need to go home? Are you having a bad day? Do you want me to call Mommy and Daddy to have them take you home?"
"Shut up!" she cried out, half tearing up.
She was a nut case, it seemed. She was losing control. I had had enough. I called her father twice to set up a conference. He was supposed to meet with me the previous afternoon, but he did not show up, and he did not even have the common courtesy to call me and let me know that he could not make it.
This outrageous disrespect was too much. The parents at the school seem less inclined to respond when I called them about their kids, unlike the parents in San Pedro who had no problem coming to my aid and holding their kids' feet to the fire.
Yes, yes, I admit it: I was annoying, a real ceiling-raiser. I would not stuff myself with contempt any longer, so frustrated had I become on account of this culture of disrespect which defined and determined Hawthorne High School.
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