Working in my Kids’ School? Zero Stars

Oh, snap! What a year we just had. We began the year blissfully unaware of what was happening in our children’s school. We dropped them off, we picked them up. Largely the end of the story. That’s how it was for a while until I realized our oldest son’s outbursts had gotten bigger and more frequent. I needed work and wanted to be on my kids’ schedule, so I took up substitute teaching. My kids’ school was wildly short-staffed, a phenomenon that’s not in any way uncommon where we live (or most places, globally for that matter).

I subbed at a preschool first. It was lovely, I was lunch coverage, so I was able to work out before I went and putz around town a bit after. It was a well-oiled machine. The school where my kids go asked if I could substitute teach there on a Thursday, so I picked up a shift. I was working in a wonderful self-contained classroom for kiddos that needed extra accommodations with a variety of things. It was a lovely classroom to work in. I loved the kids and the teachers. I was then moved to another self-contained classroom, that also had lovely kids. It was louder, and I was now arguably too close to my eldest son’s business as his locker was feet from my classroom door and his classroom was fewer than thirty feet from mine.

I started to see how the sausage was made, and the school got used to having me around. I got a job at the school as a parapro. My child’s bullies became comfortable tattling on my son for EVERYTHING, and I became comfortable dismissing them in the most polite way I could. I basically told my kid to ignore them, which he couldn’t do. I saw him desperately trying to be friends with the kids that were so cruel to him. It made me sad.

I started the transfer paperwork to arrange for him to not be at the school any longer and reminded him that those kids were never going to be his friends, and would probably end up in jail if they stayed on the path they were on of needless cruelty in the third grade. The school was offended. They hadn’t protected my child. They hadn’t made me aware of what was happening. They failed and they tried every bit of fear-mongering they could to discourage the transfer, but I did it anyway.

My son’s behavior improved the longer I was there. The school discounted my presence as a potential reason for this, and tried to claim credit where it was not due. On the last day of school one child that had been bullying my child since the 1st grade, relentlessly, said my son was unkind to him that day. Normally this would be something I would talk to my kid about, and we did talk about ignoring people rather than responding, but I was kind of proud he was putting his foot down, however long it took… I told the child “you’ve been mean to him all year, so maybe its a wash, huh?” and then I walked away. He felt entitled to my ear, and it was liberating to leave knowing this child maybe would have a lesson that his parents would never teach him.

I blame his parents for who he is. I’d met his mother and she was a beast of entitlement and histrionics. His father posted an unending stream of photos of squirrels he had killed recreationally…. he didn’t have a ton of chance to be a kind person. But my child would not be his punching bag, and I would not be his sounding board for complaints.

I try to avoid talking to others’ children, but here we are. My kids won’t be at the school, we get a fresh start, and I hope to never work in my kids’ school again. Ever. Now, for summer.