October 05, 2007~~3:01 p.m.
My Shoe stepped in something that smells BAD...

I remain completely wound up over the bullshit with this stupid teacher. Part of it, I think, is that I generally trust that the sort of people who make teaching their life's work are the sort of people I can trust to do right by my children. To me, in part, this means that they are the sort of people who put what is right for students first. Always. And that they choose to advocate for polices and practices that are in the best interest of educating young people rather than just blindly accepting decisions made by administrators (who, and I'm going to generalize here, tend to have their heads up their asses at least half of the time).

I trust that they will seek to do what is RIGHT, even though it may not always be what is EASY.

And so, when an educator shows me that he or she is not that sort of person, I become immediately distrustful, disheartened and somewhat embarrassed to have something as fundamental and defining as our career in common.

Teachers should stand for something. In fact, they should stand for KIDS. Always and without hesitation. And while I think it is lovely that Ms. Idiot does not think that Shoe's grades define him, I think UCLA and CAL and Stanford might beg to differ. And while I do not think that we should hand out good grades just so kids can get in to the colleges of their choices, I do think that we need to grade them carefully knowing that, in this day and age of ultra-competitive college admissions, even one grade may very well make the difference.

I need to get over this. I need to stop letting it dominate my thoughts. I need to just let go and get on with things that make me happy because the longer I wallow in something I cannot change, the more miserable I become.

There are five more six-week grading periods left in the school year; I will be counting them down... (Oh, and we will NEVER have this teacher again. Period. Regardless of their ridiculous policies about schedule changes. In fact, when I sign the bottom of the planner where it says I understand that my child will not be allowed to change his schedule, I will be adding the caveat that they WILL change his schedule if they give him this teacher again." I will have done my time; someone else can wade through her bullshit next year.

Alice