the stories that your lips tell

The school year has barely began for the elementary school I worked at, but yesterday I got involved in this situation that made me quite speechless.  Well, I'll start by saying people shouldn't be so quick to judge teachers or any school staff when it comes to bullying.  People need to understand that any school staff can't simply take a student's words as the truth.  There needs to be observations made and documented to prove that a student is being bullied.  There's so much to it.  Well, I'm saying this because yesterday a fourth grade boy lied about getting bullied.  I was quite shocked at the lies he was telling.  This boy immediately told his dad that these two boys were bullying him when his dad came to pick him up.  I was pulled aside since I was the staff supervising them, so while my supervisor was questioning this boy whether he was playing with the other two boys or not, he actually told him, 'no,' even though I was watching them play together the entire time.  Then he lied that one of the boys pushed him to the ground even though he was the one who purposely collapsed onto the ground all by himself.  I also witnessed him walk straight up to one of the boys and purposely stepped on the boy's shoe, but he claimed he did it by accident and didn't see the boy's shoes.  I was in complete shock at the fact that this boy was trying to get these two other boys in trouble for 'bullying' when it never happened.  Luckily, his dad wasn't one of those parents who would throw an entire scene just because of their child's words.  I understand that parents want to believe their children can do no harm, but children are capable of lying for whatever reason.  Everything isn't black and white.  Sometimes you have to truly dig to find out the truth, so you can't just blame the school for not taking immediate action because not every child tells the truth.  I understand that there are schools that do absolutely nothing to help a child, but remember that is not always the case.  I don’t know why this boy wanted to get those two boys in trouble.  Maybe he was scared he was going to get in trouble because he actually wasn’t listening when I told him to stop misbehaving.  I don’t know.  But I’m quite upset at the way the situation was handled.  My supervisor actually took that boy’s side and made the other boys apologize even though I said the boy was lying.  That’s basically showing me that my supervisor is choosing to not believe my words and would rather believe this boy who looks like he can do no harm.  Ugh.  I’m upset about it and think I need to talk to someone in a higher position about this because I don’t understand why that boy lied.  And my supervisor isn’t showing that he is competent enough to lead us to work with young children.  At least I know I need to keep an eye on this kid now in case he does something like this again.

There’s another 4th grade boy who often gets in trouble.  Usually my supervisor would send him to my class whenever he’s in trouble.  I don’t know what he does wrong because it’s something kept between my supervisor and his direct tutor, but I always wonder what it can be because I find it hard to understand why he’s always in trouble.  He’s always such a happy and friendly boy whenever I see him.  He actually kept bothering me for some time last semester to be in my class, but that wasn’t up to me.  However, he did end up staying with me for a couple of weeks since he showed better behavior with me.  Never gave me any trouble.  And when I asked him why he wanted to stay in my class. He simply told me that he liked my class which also made me quite happy.  I always feel like I need to improve more to make my class more fun, so to hear these “difficult” boys tell me that they like my class makes me relieved and happy.  If they like my class, then maybe I am doing something right.

This is probably the most romantic story I’ve read in a textbook. 💕