Shout out to my Arabic teacher that looked at us yesterday mid-lesson and said, “I’m worried. You all look exhausted and depressed.”
Of we were all like, “Oh yeah we’re dead inside, you haven’t noticed?”
And he snapped shut the textbook, threw up his hands and said, “That’s not healthy! No more vocab! Time for dancing!”
And he taught us a dance from Iraq and we danced instead of doing vocab. We didn’t stop dancing until he saw all of us laughing and was satisfied that we were all feeling better. It was perhaps the coolest, most kind-hearted thing I’ve ever seen a college instructor do.
Once my friend Henry was accused of wearing wireless headphones by a substitute so she said for him to hand them over so he took them off and handed them to her. Then later on she asked him a question and he didn’t respond so she said it louder and he still didn’t respond. She asked why he was not responding and he said “I can’t understand you ma’am, you took my hearing aids.”
HOLY SHIT
one time we had a sub that was handing back papers and called my name. I asked if someone could grab it for me and she started mocking me for not even standing up. taunting me asking why I was not walking up to the front to get the paper myself.
my classmates went dead silent and after the sub’s laughter ended someone informed her that the wheelchair parked nearby belonged to me
My sister once had her insulin pump ripped off of her because her exam proctor (a sub) thought it was some cheating device. He soon figured out that it was, in fact, not, when the port on her side (the place the needle goes in) started bleeding through her shirt. Her pump started beeping frantically, because that’s what it does, and it was general chaos until my sister ripped what’s basically her pancreas out of his hands, told her friend “Let the next proctor know I’ll need extra time,” and walked out of the room towards the nurse.
Literally schools are shit with disabilities. In elementary school I was having a high blood sugar reaction(cold sweats to rapid passing in and out of consciousness, vomiting and finally leading to a massive seizure before you die) and I KNEW I had to go to the nurse cuz I was getting worse. Kept telling my teach I needed to go and he kept saying no till finally I felt myself about to throw up and I’m screaming LET ME GO (i was a little kid to me i couldnt do anything in an institution without an adults say so or id basically go to hell) and the bitch said SHUT YOUR DAMN MOUTH AND PAY ATTENTION TO THE LESSON where I proceeded to projectile vomit all over my desk and he jut kept going on with the lesson. Finally I just booked it out of the room but I was too far gone to even REMEMBER where the nurses office was let alone where the hell I was that my class literally just left and helped me to the nurses office. I immediately went to the hospital and officially died for 5 minutes before I was revived. I could have stayed dead all because some fuck twad thought his lesson was more important than a students life
After Columbine, a local school installed metal detectors and made everyone walk through them and put their bags on a table for a teacher to search.
A few days into the school year, a teacher ripped a boy’s insulin pump off him because she thought it was a weapon, despite he and his sister insisting it was an insulin pump and he needed it to live.
I don’t know how many of you are still in school but I have some valuable knowledge that might actually help with this problem! In the United States there’s this thing called a 504 Plan that you can get which basically gives you legal protection from disability/chronic illness discrimination in public schools.
Students can qualify for 504 plans if they have physical or mental impairments that affect or limit any of their abilities to:
walk, breathe, eat, or sleep;
communicate, see, hear, or speak;
read, concentrate, think, or learn;
stand, bend, lift, or work
Examples of accommodations in 504 plans include:
preferential seating,
extended time on tests and assignments,
reduced homework or classwork,
verbal, visual, or technology aids,
modified textbooks or audio-video materials,
behavior management support,
adjusted class schedules or grading,
verbal testing,
excused lateness, absence, or missed classwork
I’m a type one diabetic and my school nurse would do stuff like keep all my meds in a locked cabinet, not let me take my insulin or test my blood sugar unless she was watching me, and lie to my mother about me inducing low blood sugars in order to get out of class. She wouldn’t even let me keep glucagon (emergency sugar injection) on my person in case I passed out from low blood sugar.
So one day I casually mentioned all this to my endocrinologist and she was really mad. She was really angry at the school nurse for mistreating me like that and informed me of this thing called a 504 plan. A 504 plan protects students with disabilities and chronic illnesses from discrimination by outlining exactly what a student needs to meet their special needs. For me, this meant I had to be able to keep ahold of my own meds in case of emergency and keep track of my own glucose levels, that I would never be marked late for a class if I was busy treating a low, and I could pause the clock on a standardized test to check my blood sugar and treat it.
If you have a disability and you’re still attending public school, PLEASE read up on 504 plans because they saved me so much grief when I was still in school. It might help you too.
recently i taught one of my eighth grade classes about sappho. the main focus was on the structure and fragmentation of her poetry, but of course it’s hard to talk about sappho without talking about her love of women (though straight people manage to pull this off all the time, somehow)
i was very upfront with them about it. i didn’t dance around the topic. i told them that sappho was known for loving women romantically, and i showed them one of her poems about a woman. hearing the word lesbian did not blow their minds. they did not freak out at the idea of a woman loving other women. they were respectful and mature. they asked some questions- and they were smart questions, too, like whether sappho’s sexuality was part of the reason her poetry doesn’t survive. we even got into some of the dicier parts of ancient greek sexuality, like pederasty. when class was over, none of them were freaking out about having to learn about an ancient lesbian. they were arguing about taylor swift on their way out, because they’re in 8th grade and that’s what 8th graders do
if anyone ever tries to tell you that we shouldn’t tell students about queer people because they “can’t handle it,” that’s absolutely not true. students are absolutely capable of discussing lgbt issues, and they can even want to talk about it, because it’s something they might not feel comfortable bringing up on their own if they have questions. there’s no reason why students can’t be introduced to queer rights and queer people, even in middle school. even in elementary school. queer does not mean “not child friendly”
and if you don’t think middle schoolers should learn about queer folk…well, then i know a bunch of 8th graders who are far more mature than you
So if my students finish a quiz/test early, I ask them to draw me stuff on the back (partly so those who need more time are less self-conscious about still having the test out, partly because fuck yeah, pictures), and it may be the single best decision of my career.
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve told these kids that (a) the Romans believed there were demons in their public toilets and (b) the word for “janitor” comes from “ianitor”, which means “(door) guard”.
So now I’m getting drawings of superhero janitors taking on toilet demons, and it’s so beautiful.
Aaaaand today a student showed me a video of himself lighting a fire in his toilet while chanting the conjugation of the word “to be”.
He said he wanted to recreate the ancient toilet demons, and I have concerns.
K… but why conjugations of to be?
My students kept forgetting how to conjugate esse, so I turned it into a rhythmic chant that I had them say over and over. The problem is that when you chant ANYTHING in Latin it sounds like you’re summoning a demon, which they decided was awesome, so uh. Now I’ll just be randomly walking through the hallway and hear voices chanting, “sum es est! sumus estis sunt!”
I’m 99% sure my colleagues think I’ve started a cult.
Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m sure everyone will turn out all the better for it.
Today a little boy was engaging in “pulling pigtails” behavior, pestering a particular girl. I told her, and the class, that sometimes when little boys like someone they’ll act like jerks just to get their attention. The rest of the class hooted, the boy protested, and the girl grimaced and said she knew, her mother and older brother and old teacher told her.
I continued on to say that just because a boy likes you doesn’t give him an excuse to be a jerk, and you shouldn’t give them a chance to get your attention until they learn how to behave and her face was priceless. Basically, picture a tiny elementary school girl with red bows in her hair embodying the spirit of this gif:
Hey Cat, I thought you’d like to see this. My school is filled with cats because the building is 400 years old and cats have been living there since the 1600 when it was built. The Head Master says the cats are part of the original heritage and history of the building, so we just live in harmony.
So, obviously, when it’s too cold outside, cats come into the rooms and just… Take classes.
(They are really cultured, they’ve been taking class for 400 years)
Steel Phoenix Studios 