i bury hatchets but i (don't) keep maps of where i put em
I've spent a week if not more looking for a day that exists SO FIRMLY in my mind, I swear I wrote about it, I apparently didn't, and while I don't expect anyone to attend to this stupid corner of the internet with the attention I do, if ANY of this sounds remotely familiar I am begging to know it because it is crystal clear in my head in text form, and yet... nothing.
Last year. I spent a day as an aide. Went to a math period with a kid, who was seated in the middle of the room and I had poor access. I had also hurt my back by sleeping wrong, so sitting hurt and standing hurt and the most comfortable option was leaning slightly against the windowsill, which I did. This kid was also one I had been an aide for more than once. I think we had a mutual tolerance of each other, but tween and their brain processed differently than mine did or my kids' did in ways that were not as familiar to me, kid was more reticent and shut down, so it wasn't like, a magic instant click like it sometimes is, although it was fine. We had some info dumping moments, I tried to just be present and validating and do my thing.
Anyway, math. Co taught -- an intervention specialist with a gen ed teacher. Me as an aide. My assigned kid inaccessible. Me trying to help where I could, seeing other kids who were clearly possible for me to help a little and who I could actually get to.
They're learning ratios. Intervention Specialist is pontificating about lord knows what. Interrupting actual math to make multiple loud, opinionated, irrelevant points. Unsure how to put the dynamic into words, but it's a very familiar one. Like it's work time and she starts going off about how someone forgot a name. How the room is a mess. Just lengthy berating, "these are the RULES, why are you STUPID" tangents that don't do much but ruin the vibe and interrupt thought. At one point she's going through papers and someone forgot their name, and she says, "NAME?!? NAME??!" and does a five minute bit on people forgetting their names. (Instead of like, just saying, hey, if you turned in a paper please come check if this is yours, easy peasy, problem solved, we all continue to do math).
A kid near me, maybe my assigned one, maybe another, I can't remember, is adding up stuff. I check it. It's wrong, but I can pretty clearly see the error -- just a calculator error, they forgot or doubled a number. Their process was correct, their calculator execution was not. Kid clearly understood the math concept being taught, was getting the hang of it, was doing well.
Kid took the paper up to her. "WRONG," she snapped, berated him about it a little, and I'm just here like... it took me .5 seconds to see it was just a random error that happens when you add a list of numbers. But sure, let's shake their confidence over the actual math concept that they have down.
Eventually kid and I return to the special education room. Main intervention specialist asks, oh, how was math. They mumble something accurate and tween-coded. Like, "meh" or "annoying" or "not great", I can't remember. I say, "Yeah, it was... not super conducive to learning" or something a little more PR-appropriate but with judgment. New day or same day, can't remember, same kid, we journey to health class this time. Kid is behind on some assignments that, if I knew them better, I would've offered to scaffold by just laying out a format and letting them fill in, instead of recreate a format laboriously each time. But this kid was very particular, more rigid thinker, slower processor than me and possibly my kids, but even if the second comparison is wrong, we didn't have the trust or rapport for me to jump in and just be like, "hold on, let me set you up here" and I recognized that. So I sat there and hated things for him and tried to helpfully prompt a little where I could.
It was health class -- kid was trying to catch up on logs detailing actions over the past few days, daily journals about food, exercise, sleep, time with friends, time in conversation, weirdly religious stuff. It is ableist and feels vaguely like a hate crime. Kid is so exacting and I am trying to be gently encouraging like it's fine, just say approximately. I am also acutely aware that my days would not pass the bro-coded, health class-energy toxic positivity judgment put on the kids. ("Did you spend time with friends? In conversation with people? If not, WHY?") The youth pastor vibe was STRONG and abrasive.
My own journal that day, if I wrote it: Sleep: 6 hrs, not enough Food: probably shredded wheat, probably sleeve of saltines Time with friends: what is that Spiritual: HARD PASS Exercise: I wish etc.
Health class moves on. There's a video about substance abuse that feels stereotypical and offensive, and it teaches me that I can sneak vodka into school in a water bottle (the more you know! It never occured to me). Technically I guess I could sneak ANYTHING in because my water bottle is not clear? Who knows what this contains (jk it's water). There's a curriculum called "Too Good for Drugs" the name of which sets everything in me on edge because what in the moral superiority is going on here, NO NO NO NOT OKAY. It is six months, probably more, before this class will ever be a threat to my children but my brain is already saying, oh no. no. nononononono. ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. NO. Anyway. For posterity. Because apparently I never wrote this out before.
You know what, I'm petty enough to add to this. Either that same day or another one, the intervention specialist also, in one of these monologues, used the word "fetish" in a nonsexual way, in reference to liking something strongly, or being particular about something. The class, because they were seventh graders, lost their collective shit. And I, because I am internally 12, also did internally, but I had the luxury of an N95 and decades of being trained to just smile politely. I am not without empathy. I have said a number of inconvenient things. At one point within the past year or two, I was at the zoo with my kids and my son said, "Hold on, give me a sec," and I, not thinking, shot back, "I'll give you ALL the secs" and immediately realized what I had said, and both children absolutely lost it and so did I, and it was a lot of "OMG NO NO NO NO THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT TO SAY" and it was very funny, overall. Nothing to be defensive over, honestly just hilarious and my own fault. Back to math class. The seventh graders lose their minds, and she doesn't share in the utter embarrassment or amusement, she doubles down. Arguing that it's a normal word. Why would that be funny? Repeating it over and over, with increased uproar from the seventh graders each time. It's making it worse. She keeps saying fetish. We are hitting Scott's Tots levels of cringe that she is perpetuating. I want to crawl under the desk. I am also on the side of the seventh graders and possibly too chronically online. It ended, I think, with them being scolded. After she had escalated it. After she also made a point to say "fetish" multiple times, honestly not unlike the very seventh graders would've done. I'm saying all this because I am really just petty, but I also was talking recently about how "grooming" feels like an appropriate word for how this teacher interacts with/views my child, and I mean that in an emotional more than sexual sense. Maybe there's a better word but I haven't found it. It's a sense of more vaguely inappropriate emotional boundaries, not even (necessarily) for any ultimate purpose, nefarious or otherwise, but just emotional boundaries that aren't in place but should be. It's very much the vibe of the teacher that simultaneously disparages kids but also deeply wants to be liked by them. Talking about my kid in terms like they are "besties" and overemphasizing (completely G rated, nonoffensive) inside jokes in a way that places the emphasis on some perceived bond and oh we are so close rather than just shared joy or like... indulging the child's interests more sincerely. Just too much emotional investment in the opinions of a seventh grader, and approaches and reactions along the same lines as what a seventh grader would have (similar to the math class incident).














