First-Year Blues

I've never been so enraged over something so stupid.

This past afternoon as I was supervising a detention period, I let out the three students who I had to watch to be excused for a bathroom break. As proper procedure goes, I have to stand in the hallway and wait for them to return from the bathroom.

As it just so happens, another student, a senior, was exiting the bathroom. We struck up a small conversation, nothing much -- myself asking him "where should you be?" and all that. I assumed that he was returning to class -- so when one of my detention students came out of the bathroom (that lil' smart-ass), he wanted to take a calculator back to the math teacher he borrowed it from. Of course, he cannot do that.

Just to save time, I asked the senior to return the calculator to the teacher instead. He obliged and went on his way. Things were cool until the end of the day, when apparently the senior's instructor e-mailed me and asked where he was. Also, the senior re-affirmed the story to his instructor that I had him run an errand.

So casually, I e-mailed her back and said that he did stop by the detention room and returned a calculator for one of my detention students.

Then, I got the third-degree.

Her next e-mail was so condenscending, I could hardly believe it. She just railed on the fact that I should have checked the senior's pass, not having him run errands for a "kid" in detention, plus the fact that I was chatting with him (for no more than a minute) -- that's a NO-NO. Several exclamation marks were used. Plus, she "cc'ed" the principal, so she's basically making me look like the asshole in this whole situation.

As I figured out later, she released the senior to go to the nurse at 2:00 p.m. for something that I have no knowledge of, and he returned back to her class at EXACTLY 2:07 p.m.

Oh, my God! A whole, seven minutes!!!

It pissed me off something fierce after school today. I sat there thinking of a good e-mail to send back to her, but I decided to keep my dignity and left it at that. I promptly deleted the e-mails.

Now, as I was thinking tonight, if I were a veteran teacher instead of a first-year, would she have used that language, or that tone, for that matter? I really don't think so. I'll admit, I'm still new to the whole education industry and I'm still learning procedures every day, but my God!

Overall, she made me feel "yay-big" in this school. She fuckin' treated me through that e-mail like I was damn middle schooler. Another teacher telling me how to do my job -- and she runs off and tells the principal on me for something so ridiculous. Get your facts straight. Some fuckin' nerve.

Maybe I am not cut out for this crap -- but I'm going to persevere. I just cannot wait to get called into the office for this one tomorrow...