report cards

Today was report card conferences. Two parents from my homeroom class came to collect their child's report card. One of those volunteers/works at school. Other parents from other homerooms came in but most didn't stop to talk. Just took their kid's failed test and left. I want to cry just looking at the math grades in comparison to most students' other grades. It makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong to give out all those Fs.

Today I feel like shit. Just personally, I felt like shit about today. The kids were little bastards all day. And the parents, by their absence, proved to me why this is the case.

Also, kids call each other 'white' as an insult. In front of me. This really, really fucking upsets me.

D is back in my class from his suspension - the effect was immediate and immediately bad. I waver from hour to hour. For one moment I know that this is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, for the next I think I've made the biggest mistake ever. This teaching stuff, it's an emotional backflip for me. Cool and collected and stern and unfazed and as motherly/teacherly as I know how to be on the outside. Just shattered and frustrated on the inside. Simultaneously energized and exhausted.

Education, you will make a wreck of me yet.