September 29th, 2009

The one where I decimate a kid's self esteem unintentionally

Yesterday, I was headed to the teacher restroom during a passing period when I saw two students engaged in a shoving match.  I did my typical, “HEY!” gutteral yell, when one of the students smacked the other’s backpack really hard.

I marched up to the offender, who was dressed in a purple shirt, had long, black, curly hair and was rather rotund and demanded that they follow me to the office.  I did my whole “teacher speech” about how our campus has a hands off policy and that it isn’t nice to hit students, and that especially as a girl, such behavior was not appropriate to do to boys and a whole lot of other discipline-esque speech.

The student was silent the whole time, which only served to make me even angrier, because HELLO, I AM TALKING TO YOU!  I continued on with my speech, saying that she could get really hurt if the boy hit her, and that if she was trying to flirt with him, there were other things she could do, and basically prattled on incessantly.

When we arrived in the office, I began rattling off the incident to the principal’s secretary so that she could explain the situation when the student had to see the principal or VP.

Finally, I snapped at the kid, “And what is your name?”

And in the deepest, scariest voice ever, the kid spit out HIS NAME.  This was no girl, it was a dude, who looked like a girl.

I was mortified.  And then I apologized over and over again for thinking that “he” was a “she.”  The poor kid looked so defeated, and I felt really awful.

Until about 2 minutes later, when another student ran by me, tugged on a girls backpack and said, “HEY!  HE LIKES YOU!” while pointing at a friend.  The girl giggled and the kid yelled, “HE WANTS TO GET FREAKY!”

Then the kid saw me, said, “Awww, hell nah!” and ran into the science building.

I laughed the whole way to my classroom.

Sometimes, I love, love, love my job.

*It should be noted that I saw the “girl” this morning and guess what?  HE GOT A HAIRCUT.  What have I done?!

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