phoenixgirl
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2003
- Messages
- 3,390
So I teach at an overcrowded, less than pristine high school. We have our first generation immigrant population, our drug dog and weapon searches, our gangs operating out of the apartment complexes in our district. We also have our middle of the road suburban areas and the kids who make my job a delight most days of the year.
In my sixth year of teaching, I no longer have the "personality conflicts" that come with being a first or second year teacher, where you don't get along with a student and come to hate them. They're teenagers, after all, they all have bad days. You just need to roll with the punches, take a deep breath, and see the best in them.
But for crap's sake, the kids I don't teach are the ones that bug me. Two years ago a kid left a coffee cannister full of his own urine (warm, mind you) in my room for the first year teacher whose class he had in my room. Lucky me got to find it.
Today, while I was innocently performing my 85 minute hall duty, in which I had already chased away two kids who were supposed to have left school already but were standing outside a room air-humping, a girl who works at the computer help desk came up to me with a cable tie and told me to "go like this" (put her pointer finger out). I retracted my finger as she came near me with the cable tie. She said, no, no, just go like this. I said, are you going to put that on my finger? She said no. I said, I'm no fool, no thank you. She said, no, it's not that, I need your help, go like this.
So I put my finger out there, and she friggin yanks the thing as tight as she can! Cinches the thing to the bone! My finger becomes purple/red and squeezes out over the zip tie sausage style! I immediately shout, "What were you thinking?" She said she just wanted to see what would happen. I order her to fetch me some scissors. I realize that I don't trust moron girl with scissors, so I take them from her, but realize that I am right handed and trying to cut it off with my left hand. And of course, there is absolutely no room to ram the scissors in there anyway, so it's a lost cause.
So I run to our school nurse, who does not have the best reputation. Now I know why. I sheepishly and quickly explain the situation to her. She tries to cut the tie off with her desk scissors which are rusty, old, and dull. She expresses her concern that she'll cut my finger. I say, ok then, but I see it would basically slice off a chunk from the exterior side of my pointer finger. She actually says she can't get it off. And then she tells me not to panic! Don't panic? You're the nurse! Go get a strong man to try to cut it off! Call the ambulance! But don't announce you can't get it off and then trail off, needing a suggestion . . .
So I say, if we had fingernail scissors we could get this off. She says she doesn't have any, then says oh wait, and finds some in a file cabinet. She tells me she doesn't want to cut my finger, and I say cut my g-d finger, just get it off! The scissors break. She finds bandage scissors, we reposition next to each other sitting down, she tells me to pull my finger closer (to me? the scissors? to the stars I am starting to see?). By this point, at least five minutes have passed, my finger is disgusting, and she has told me about five times not to panic and that I look green/don't look good and that she doesn't think she can get it off with no suggestion on her part as to how she is going to fix the situation, so I am starting to freak out.
Finally it comes off, and I have a cut, bloody, purple finger. By then the (dorky, as we would expect) help desk grownup employee guy tracks me down to see what has become of me. I shout the most colorful expletives that I think are school appropriate in his direction. I know it's not his fault, but whereas the office and the guidance department learned years ago not to employ packs of the "bad kids" as their aides (good kids in multiples or bad kids in singles are the way to go), he clearly hasn't, so I spend half the period chasing kids around who are causing mischief in the name of the help desk, and it makes my stupid duty a burden, and now his stupid "aide" had too much time and too many cable ties on her hands, and I am the poor schmuck who had to suffer for it!
OK, thanks for letting me vent. I am glad that the urine and the attempts to sever my finger only come from kids I don't know. At least when I know the kids, I have a rapport with them and can reach and help them. But it's the friggin ones I don't know that make me want to quit my job!
So tomorrow I get to write my first discipline referral of the year. The help desk guy tried to make it ok by telling me her name so I could write her up (I said, what will I write her up for? Being an idiot?), but now that I've thought about it, she lied to me and harmed me physically. Plus help desk guy said he told her not to play around with the cable ties. I fully expect that she will be suspended for this, but really, I just want an apology. I just want an opportunity to say, "You're an idiot! And I could have gone to the hospital! And then I would have had an expensive emergency room bill just because you and the school nurse are idiots! And it doesn't matter if you didn't 'mean' to hurt me because you knowingly cinched a non-retractable object on my finger as tight as you could! I could have been seriously injured! Now I will throttle you until you feel the pain of an incompetent nurse cutting you with rusty scissors!"
[Insert dad in A Christmas Story muttering frinkin ruggin schmuggin ragin . . . here]
In my sixth year of teaching, I no longer have the "personality conflicts" that come with being a first or second year teacher, where you don't get along with a student and come to hate them. They're teenagers, after all, they all have bad days. You just need to roll with the punches, take a deep breath, and see the best in them.
But for crap's sake, the kids I don't teach are the ones that bug me. Two years ago a kid left a coffee cannister full of his own urine (warm, mind you) in my room for the first year teacher whose class he had in my room. Lucky me got to find it.
Today, while I was innocently performing my 85 minute hall duty, in which I had already chased away two kids who were supposed to have left school already but were standing outside a room air-humping, a girl who works at the computer help desk came up to me with a cable tie and told me to "go like this" (put her pointer finger out). I retracted my finger as she came near me with the cable tie. She said, no, no, just go like this. I said, are you going to put that on my finger? She said no. I said, I'm no fool, no thank you. She said, no, it's not that, I need your help, go like this.
So I put my finger out there, and she friggin yanks the thing as tight as she can! Cinches the thing to the bone! My finger becomes purple/red and squeezes out over the zip tie sausage style! I immediately shout, "What were you thinking?" She said she just wanted to see what would happen. I order her to fetch me some scissors. I realize that I don't trust moron girl with scissors, so I take them from her, but realize that I am right handed and trying to cut it off with my left hand. And of course, there is absolutely no room to ram the scissors in there anyway, so it's a lost cause.
So I run to our school nurse, who does not have the best reputation. Now I know why. I sheepishly and quickly explain the situation to her. She tries to cut the tie off with her desk scissors which are rusty, old, and dull. She expresses her concern that she'll cut my finger. I say, ok then, but I see it would basically slice off a chunk from the exterior side of my pointer finger. She actually says she can't get it off. And then she tells me not to panic! Don't panic? You're the nurse! Go get a strong man to try to cut it off! Call the ambulance! But don't announce you can't get it off and then trail off, needing a suggestion . . .
So I say, if we had fingernail scissors we could get this off. She says she doesn't have any, then says oh wait, and finds some in a file cabinet. She tells me she doesn't want to cut my finger, and I say cut my g-d finger, just get it off! The scissors break. She finds bandage scissors, we reposition next to each other sitting down, she tells me to pull my finger closer (to me? the scissors? to the stars I am starting to see?). By this point, at least five minutes have passed, my finger is disgusting, and she has told me about five times not to panic and that I look green/don't look good and that she doesn't think she can get it off with no suggestion on her part as to how she is going to fix the situation, so I am starting to freak out.
Finally it comes off, and I have a cut, bloody, purple finger. By then the (dorky, as we would expect) help desk grownup employee guy tracks me down to see what has become of me. I shout the most colorful expletives that I think are school appropriate in his direction. I know it's not his fault, but whereas the office and the guidance department learned years ago not to employ packs of the "bad kids" as their aides (good kids in multiples or bad kids in singles are the way to go), he clearly hasn't, so I spend half the period chasing kids around who are causing mischief in the name of the help desk, and it makes my stupid duty a burden, and now his stupid "aide" had too much time and too many cable ties on her hands, and I am the poor schmuck who had to suffer for it!
OK, thanks for letting me vent. I am glad that the urine and the attempts to sever my finger only come from kids I don't know. At least when I know the kids, I have a rapport with them and can reach and help them. But it's the friggin ones I don't know that make me want to quit my job!
So tomorrow I get to write my first discipline referral of the year. The help desk guy tried to make it ok by telling me her name so I could write her up (I said, what will I write her up for? Being an idiot?), but now that I've thought about it, she lied to me and harmed me physically. Plus help desk guy said he told her not to play around with the cable ties. I fully expect that she will be suspended for this, but really, I just want an apology. I just want an opportunity to say, "You're an idiot! And I could have gone to the hospital! And then I would have had an expensive emergency room bill just because you and the school nurse are idiots! And it doesn't matter if you didn't 'mean' to hurt me because you knowingly cinched a non-retractable object on my finger as tight as you could! I could have been seriously injured! Now I will throttle you until you feel the pain of an incompetent nurse cutting you with rusty scissors!"
[Insert dad in A Christmas Story muttering frinkin ruggin schmuggin ragin . . . here]
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