My daughter recently entered the sixth grade, which in our district marks the the first year of intermediate school (a.k.a, junior high). The transition was brusque.
She graduated from a tender, loving elementary school where duckling students imprinted on gracious teachers they all hoped to someday emulate.
Although there were occasional grumps and malcontents on the faculty, the overall experience was sunshine and unicorns and a sense of protection.
From this safe harbor she found herself adrift in the turbulent seas of a large and intimidating campus where older kids vape, teachers use occasional expletives, and bathroom privileges are lorded over teen girls by capricious teachers at precisely the moment they are most anxious about commencing menstruation.
Acquainting herself with the whims of such junior high school teachers is both a grave injustice and excellent preparation for the future.
We've all faced petty tyrants in the course of our lives, and in all probability will continue to interact with them on some level in the future.
Consider the low level bureaucrat at the large, faceless institution of your choice. An indistinct soviet-style cinder block building brims with employees whose powers are uniquely designed to forestall the progress of those they ostensibly serve and impede access to their superiors. The lack of service is delivered with scorn or apathy depending on the day.
According to my Cuban father, certain experiences at the DMV or post office are the closest a U.S. citizen can come to appreciating life under communism.
My daughter is skilled in the art of hyperbole, so when she first reported a teacher with an exaggerated sense of self-importance and a desire to crush and then rebuild her students in her own image, we were skeptical.
Then came back to school night. The volume of material this teacher hurled at the parents paired with the rapid pressured speech with which she spoke (rendering linear thought impossible) set a tone that implied "Sink-or-swim, your kid's future is your problem, not mine." We left demoralized and sympathetic to our daughter's plight.
I'm an ER doc. A short list of things that stress me out:
- A toddler presenting the day after a major cleft palate repair in need of emergent intubation.
- A hypotensive patient with a ruptured thoracic aortic dissection awaiting a surgeon.
- A 12 year old boy, hypotensive and pale as a sheet from a massive lower GI bleed, as I ordered a transfusion and arranged for a pediatric ICU transfer. (Endoscopy showed a Meckel's diverticulum - sometimes the disease doesn't read the textbook!)
- A friend's husband brought to the ED in ventricular tachycardia.
Junior high teacher would not make my list, yet the toll this person took on my daughter's normally blithe spirit and love of learning became a source of stress to me. My daughter asked us to consider home schooling to spare her the stress of the classroom.
We considered it briefly, but decided to instead help her structure her time and help her study the material as she built up the skill set to handle her nemesis. We made suggestions, and let her suffer the consequences when she failed to take them and faced the aftermath.
It was touch and go at first, but she rose to the occasion. She put in hours until she was up to speed on her assignments (the workload from this single class exceeded the combined homework burden from all of her other classes ). She went to after school hours, where she witnessed a gentler side to the abrasive classroom personality.
Most importantly, the drive to succeed came from within her. For a kids who had been able to cruise on her academic reputation in her final year of elementary school, humility was a hard lesson to accept. We framed her initial difficulty in terms of growth mindset - it was a question of persistence and practice, not innate ability.
Our family narrative is that there will always be smarter people in any classroom who are quicker to grasp ideas and intuit logic; our unfair advantage is our work ethic.
This past quarter was the hardest fought academic battle my daughter has fought to date. I'm proud to say she learned that she, too, possessed this family superpower.
It toughened her up and taught her grit.
It unleashed an internal drive that blew us all away.
I'm not fond of petty tyrants, and dealing with them is an unpleasant fact of life.
But I'm grateful that my kid could take a lousy experience and transform it into an opportunity for growth.
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Good for you and your daughter not letting a petty tyrant bring you down to their level.
Some people get their kicks abusing the little power they have.
As a side, I find the people who have to work harder in school tend to do better than the ones that stuff just comes naturally.
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Thanks Xrayvsn. I’m torn between thinking this is an unnecessary stressor and lauding her for coping with a reality we will all face repeatedly over the course of our lives. I concur that working harder for it is a lesson that pays long-term dividends.
We home schooled precisely to avoid this rancid soup. Instead my kids were allowed to learn without the assholes (except me of course, their loving father). The school will not kill your kid. The liberal agenda will however. School is a propaganda mill. The mean girls will kill her as well. They are the Velociraptors roaming the halls of your kids reality. Anything inflammation does cancer does better and mean girls are pure cancer. The mean girls, mixed with the liberal agenda will try to destroy her soul. Successfully rising to meet a challenge, should not include that level of expense.
Monitor this aspect of your child’s life and do not fall into the trap of denial or complacency, denying there is any problem or assuming school knows best. Do not buy the soap they are selling. Your kid will learn and what she will learn is what it feels like to suffer the terrorism of American education. American education is a place where babysitting occurs, favorites are picked and ordered, the teacher will pretend to teach and the student will pretend to learn. In the end the kid will get a piece of paper proclaiming how amazing they are (except for the ones who dropped out, developed an addiction or killed themselves), and the teacher will get a nice fat pension and FIRE on your nickle, having destroyed your kids soul. The ones ordered to the bottom half will get to be janitors if they are lucky. Any learning that occurs is completely incidental, and a function of your kid’s personal drive to learn. You got one shot at this. Do not let yourself be deluded. I’m not saying what to do, but diagnosis starts with a high index of suspicion and the best clinician is the one who doesn’t miss the diagnosis staring him/her in the face.
You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by…
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There’s plenty to be disappointed by in said rancid soup. I vacillate between the benefits of learning to deal with different people (teachers as much as students) and the ample wasted time that could be spent learning more meaningfully.
We are monitoring closely, my friend, and do not take our responsibility lightly. We realize more and more that what makes a great school is engaged parents pushing curious kids – those are resources we have in abundance. I’ll keep you posted on how it plays out.
Doctor, I’m turning 62 next week. I could write a book about my years of experiences with low-level petty tyrants. It seems like it’s become worse in recent years, at least in my experiences. What’s bad is when low-level petty tyrants have some say in your job security and livelihood, or as in your case, in your child’s education. In the case of jobs, IMO, few managers actually “manage” anymore. They disengage, or enable toxic behavior. The crass and dismissive manner which this teacher addressed you parents is inexcusable, and at the least should have warranted a reprimand by the principal (there again, disengaged or enabled this?). I personally would have no compunction in suspending or terminating a teacher who said this to parents. Problem is, with thuggish teacher unions, protected classes of people, and tenure, it’s near impossible to terminate these types, save for doing something egregious, or in some cases, for violating some silly PC policy. Point is, we as taxpayers are paying for their salaries, benefits, and retirements. It’s not just this teacher’s insolence to you parents, it’s the entire Common Core and progressive curriculums, and subsequently poor end results. Half the families in my church homeschool, and some send their children to private Christian schools. These families struggle financially because of this. I commend you for being proactive in your daughter’s education.
Author
Antonio,
Appreciate your thoughtful comment. It can be far easier to promote than eliminate problem personalities in any bureaucracy, which creates a pattern that enables tyrant to thrive in their mini-domains.
We go back and forth about home schooling – Gasem has built a pretty strong argument in favor of it in a prior guest post – but for now we are willing to stick with school because the perceived benefits outweigh the drawbacks, however distasteful.
One thing I’ve come to accept is that in many instances, what makes a public school reputable often has more to do with the kids than the teachers.
Fondly,
CD