This news story caused me to reflect back over my many years as a teacher, and I started to wonder where such a kid as this one was while I was teaching. I had many first graders call me “mommy,” a fifth grader who wanted to know if I might be planning to get a divorce because she wanted me to meet her dad, and a second grader who asked me if my age was seventy-five. (I was thirty-nine at the time.) But never did a student say that I was cute.
While thinking about school systems where I taught and about what is going on in schools across the nation now, it occurred to me that absurd punitive measures have been administered all too frequently over the years. These actions are not the actions of the majority of educators, but rather a tiny minority of administrators and teachers. Unfortunately, the actions of these people sully the profession as a whole and cause children to dislike school.
For the small minority of educators who apparently know little about children, I have some advice. Get your semi-educated minds in gear. Go back to the university and retake the Child and Adolescent Development course. The little people you have been charged with educating are not miniature adults. They have experiences based on the years they have been on this earth; they think as children think; they understand as young minds comprehend; they analyze as immature brains process information; they act as children act. Get off their cases and let them be children. Better yet, find a new career.
I know stupid can’t be fixed, but ignorant can be remediated. Get to work on it, teachers and administrators!
Now that I’ve vented, I feel better. But I’m still upset that at least one child I taught during my career didn’t think I was cute.
